VacationSelector

Istanbul or Ottawa?

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

Your match

Istanbul
✓ Best match
65
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nightlife with your weighting.

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

IstanbulOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Istanbul leads by 43 points.43
IstanbulOttawa
Score430
Swim season months30
Beaches 10 km29
Coast distance0 km423 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Istanbul leads by 6 points.6
IstanbulOttawa
Score7064
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,086684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2034
Museums & heritage. Istanbul leads by 34 points.34
IstanbulOttawa
Score6632
Museums within 10 km14515
Museums within 2 km of centre718
Share of museums within 2 km %4953
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
IstanbulOttawa
Score7944
Drinking venues within 4 km2,266432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,176303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5270
Nightclubs within 4 km22135
Nature & day trips. Ottawa leads by 16 points.16
IstanbulOttawa
Score2541
Protected land share 50 km %18
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %48100
Park area within 2 km60 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Istanbul leads by 21 points.21
IstanbulOttawa
Score6746
Tourist attractions within 2 km6811
Park area within 2 km60 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Istanbul leads by 25 points.25
IstanbulOttawa
Score7550
Notable places within 2 km28571
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Istanbul leads by 35 points.35
IstanbulOttawa
Score8954
Price level global35.284
Daily budget€100
Year-round weather. Istanbul leads by 16 points.16
IstanbulOttawa
Score6953
Monthly daytime high9.2 °C to 29.7 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall23 mm to 101 mm53 mm to 94 mm
Dry months40
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
Istanbul
9
10
12
17
22
27
30
30
26
21
16
11
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Sea temperature, °C
Istanbul
9
8
9
11
16
21
23
24
22
19
15
12
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Istanbul
74
74
66
47
29
29
23
29
43
85
79
101
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Istanbul
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Istanbul
3
3
5
6
9
10
11
10
7
5
4
2
Ottawa
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Istanbul: 1991-2020 normals, Istanbul / Goztepe (9.9 km from centre). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromIstanbulOttawa
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 35 m
€110-186
IST · 36 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
9 h 45 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
CancunCUN
12 h 55 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 5 m
€608-794
IST · 36 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 15 m
€141-223
IST · 36 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
11 h 0 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
11 h 55 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
4 h 50 m
€175-263
2 stops
YOW · 12 km
BostonBOS, PSM
9 h 45 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
10 h 30 m
no fares
IST · 36 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
YOW · 12 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

MeasureIstanbulOttawa
Official languageTurkishFrench, English
CurrencyTurkish Lira (TRY)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+3UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation100 m70 m
Main airportİstanbul Airport (IST)36 km from centre345 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureIstanbulOttawa
City population15,655,9241,017,449
People per km²2,930366
Museums within 10 km7220
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre6262
Swim season, months above 21 °C3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Istanbul or Ottawa 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). 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. 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.