VacationSelector

Galway or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Galway
39
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Rotterdam
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families 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.

GalwayRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 14 points.14
GalwayRotterdam
Score5137
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1322
Coast distance1 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 35 points.35
GalwayRotterdam
Score3772
Restaurants within 2 km of centre173862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2046
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 40 points.40
GalwayRotterdam
Score2060
Museums within 10 km541
Museums within 2 km of centre520
Share of museums within 2 km %10049
Unesco sites within 50 km05
Nightlife. Rotterdam leads by 23 points.23
GalwayRotterdam
Score2649
Drinking venues within 4 km185542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre153378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8370
Nightclubs within 4 km840
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 13 points.13
GalwayRotterdam
Score5542
Protected land share 50 km %—10
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %8579
Park area within 2 km65 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
GalwayRotterdam
Score2562
Tourist attractions within 2 km527
Park area within 2 km65 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km08
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 29 points.29
GalwayRotterdam
Score2251
Notable places within 2 km1474
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 1 points.1
GalwayRotterdam
Score5758
Price level global80.279.2
Daily budget€187€181
Year-round weather. Rotterdam leads by 2 points.2
GalwayRotterdam
Score5456
Monthly daytime high8.9 °C to 19.6 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall63 mm to 113 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months00
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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Galway
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
2
2
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGalwayRotterdam
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
2 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
MalagaAGP
2 h 50 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 50 m
€274-294
1 stop
RTM · 5 km
AlicanteALC
2 h 40 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
RTM · 5 km
FaroFAO
2 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
RTM · 5 km
BostonBOS, PSM
6 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasureGalwayRotterdam
Official languageEnglish, IrishDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation25 m10 m
Main airportShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureGalwayRotterdam
City population83,456664,311
People per km²1,5632,080
Museums within 10 km440
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km05
Distinct cuisines in the centre2577
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Galway or Rotterdam 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). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.