VacationSelector

Chicago or Valencia?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Chicago
56
match

Wins on sights concentration and good for families with your weighting.

Valencia
✓ Best match
64
match

Wins on value for money and year-round weather with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

ChicagoValencia
Beaches & swimming. Valencia leads by 14 points.14
ChicagoValencia
Score5367
Swim season months15
Beaches 10 km1212
Coast distance10,000 km3 km
Water distance1 km3 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 3 points.3
ChicagoValencia
Score8178
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,1471,995
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3733
Museums & heritage. Valencia leads by 9 points.9
ChicagoValencia
Score4655
Museums within 10 km4559
Museums within 2 km of centre2026
Share of museums within 2 km %4444
Unesco sites within 50 km12
Nightlife. Valencia leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoValencia
Score6270
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1231,513
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728957
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6563
Nightclubs within 4 km51108
Nature & day trips. Valencia leads by 15 points.15
ChicagoValencia
Score3853
Protected land share 50 km %610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10064
Park area within 2 km118 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoValencia
Score5542
Tourist attractions within 2 km1812
Park area within 2 km118 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km20
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 18 points.18
ChicagoValencia
Score7052
Notable places within 2 km21778
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Valencia leads by 28 points.28
ChicagoValencia
Score4371
Price level global10060.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Valencia leads by 27 points.27
ChicagoValencia
Score5784
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C16.8 °C to 30.6 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm7 mm to 70 mm
Dry months08
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Valencia
17
17
19
21
24
28
30
31
28
25
20
17
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Valencia
14
14
14
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Valencia
38
30
40
33
36
26
7
15
70
66
52
48
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Valencia
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Valencia
6
6
7
8
9
9
10
10
8
7
6
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre). Valencia: 1991-2020 normals, Valencia (1.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoValencia
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 55 m
€103-131
VLC · 9 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 15 m
€80-167
VLC · 9 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 25 m
€155-178
VLC · 9 km
RomeFCO, CIA
9 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 0 m
€70-117
VLC · 9 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 50 m
€51-87
VLC · 9 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 0 m
€69-81
VLC · 9 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 15 m
€110-139
VLC · 9 km
ZurichZRH
9 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 0 m
€151-206
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
8 h 50 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 15 m
€128-199
1 stop
VLC · 9 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
2 h 5 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 9 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureChicagoValencia
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m15 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsValencia Airport (VLC)9 km from centre107 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoValencia
City population2,746,388840,792
People per km²4,5296,242
Museums within 10 km4346
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km12
Distinct cuisines in the centre8792
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Chicago or Valencia somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.