VacationSelector

Ghent or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Ghent
50
match

Wins on value for money and good for families with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and nightlife 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.

GhentWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Ghent leads by 8 points.8
GhentWashington DC
Score2618
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km81
Coast distance32 km34 km
Water distance32 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 7 points.7
GhentWashington DC
Score7077
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7641,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4936
Museums & heritage. Ghent leads by 3 points.3
GhentWashington DC
Score5855
Museums within 10 km2483
Museums within 2 km of centre2055
Share of museums within 2 km %8366
Unesco sites within 50 km50
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 12 points.12
GhentWashington DC
Score4961
Drinking venues within 4 km5701,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre446593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7858
Nightclubs within 4 km2654
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 8 points.8
GhentWashington DC
Score3442
Protected land share 50 km %710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %41
Land share of disc %8794
Park area within 2 km84 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Ghent leads by 12 points.12
GhentWashington DC
Score5038
Tourist attractions within 2 km197
Park area within 2 km84 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 30 points.30
GhentWashington DC
Score4676
Notable places within 2 km55305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ghent leads by 17 points.17
GhentWashington DC
Score6043
Price level global76.2100
Daily budget€180—
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 6 points.6
GhentWashington DC
Score5662
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months10
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
Ghent
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Ghent
6
6
6
9
12
16
18
19
18
15
11
8
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Ghent
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Ghent
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Ghent
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Ghent: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (44.9 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromGhentWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 56 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 55 m
€47-116
BRU · 56 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 56 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 56 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 56 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureGhentWashington DC
Official languageFrench, German, Dutch–
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation12 m72 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)56 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureGhentWashington DC
City population272,657689,545
People per km²1,7283,896
Museums within 10 km3099
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km50
Distinct cuisines in the centre8382
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ghent or Washington DC 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. Ground elevations sampled from the Mapzen terrain tiles via OpenTopoData, merging SRTM, ASTER, NED, EU-DEM and national sources. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.