VacationSelector

Lima or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Lima
✓ Best match
55
match

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

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and places to eat 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.

LimaWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Lima leads by 19 points.19
LimaWashington DC
Score3718
Swim season months23
Beaches 10 km121
Coast distance6 km34 km
Water distance6 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 25 points.25
LimaWashington DC
Score5277
Restaurants within 2 km of centre7961,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1436
Museums & heritage. Lima leads by 9 points.9
LimaWashington DC
Score6455
Museums within 10 km8983
Museums within 2 km of centre4755
Share of museums within 2 km %5366
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 16 points.16
LimaWashington DC
Score4561
Drinking venues within 4 km4091,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre177593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4358
Nightclubs within 4 km6354
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 15 points.15
LimaWashington DC
Score2742
Protected land share 50 km %210
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %5194
Park area within 2 km54 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Lima leads by 18 points.18
LimaWashington DC
Score5638
Tourist attractions within 2 km257
Park area within 2 km54 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km41
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 30 points.30
LimaWashington DC
Score4676
Notable places within 2 km54305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lima leads by 37 points.37
LimaWashington DC
Score8043
Price level global47.7100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Lima leads by 30 points.30
LimaWashington DC
Score9262
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 27.4 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 1 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months120
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
Lima
26
27
27
25
22
20
19
19
19
20
22
24
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Lima
21
22
21
20
19
18
18
17
17
17
18
19
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Lima
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Lima
13
13
12
12
12
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lima
5
5
6
6
3
1
1
1
1
2
3
4
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lima: 1991-2020 normals, Lima-Callao / Aerop. Internacional Jorgechavez (10.9 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLimaWashington DC
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
6 h 45 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
8 h 0 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
1 h 20 m
€158-333
IAD · 37 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
8 h 35 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
5 h 40 m
€403-426
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
2 h 25 m
€187-272
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
MadridMAD
11 h 50 m
€895-903
LIM · 9 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
4 h 45 m
€282-372
LIM · 9 km
9 h 40 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BogotaBOG
2 h 55 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
5 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
5 h 40 m
€348-370
1 stop
LIM · 9 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Punta CanaPUJ
4 h 50 m
no fares
LIM · 9 km
3 h 30 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 2026-09 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

MeasureLimaWashington DC
Official languageSpanish, Aymara, Quechua
CurrencySol (PEN)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsABC220 V, 60 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number111 or 911911
Elevation154 m72 m
Main airportJorge Chávez International Airport (LIM)9 km from centre63 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLimaWashington DC
City population9,943,800689,545
People per km²3,7213,896
Museums within 10 km4699
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre3382
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months3 months

Where else could you go?

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