VacationSelector

Lucerne or Portland?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Portland
✓ Best match
42
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

LucernePortland
Beaches & swimming. Lucerne and Portland are level on 0.
LucernePortland
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1627
Coast distance669 km69 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Portland leads by 27 points.27
LucernePortland
Score4774
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2691,011
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2544
Museums & heritage. Lucerne leads by 5 points.5
LucernePortland
Score4035
Museums within 10 km2323
Museums within 2 km of centre1315
Share of museums within 2 km %5765
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Portland leads by 30 points.30
LucernePortland
Score2858
Drinking venues within 4 km202942
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151518
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7555
Nightclubs within 4 km1132
Nature & day trips. Portland leads by 10 points.10
LucernePortland
Score2535
Protected land share 50 km %713
Landscape blanket share 50 km %03
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km29 hectares37 hectares
Good for families. Lucerne leads by 4 points.4
LucernePortland
Score3834
Tourist attractions within 2 km158
Park area within 2 km29 hectares37 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Lucerne and Portland are level on 35.
LucernePortland
Score3535
Notable places within 2 km2929
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Portland leads by 8 points.8
LucernePortland
Score3543
Price level global110.5100
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Portland leads by 12 points.12
LucernePortland
Score5365
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C7.9 °C to 27.7 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm13 mm to 145 mm
Dry months03
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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Portland
8
11
13
16
20
23
27
28
25
18
12
8
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Portland
128
94
101
75
65
41
13
14
39
87
138
145
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Portland
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Portland
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre). Portland: 1991-2020 normals, Portland International Airport (9.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucernePortland
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
9 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
5 h 20 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
San FranciscoSFO
11 h 40 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
MiamiMIA, OPF
9 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
5 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
10 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 45 m
no fares
PDX · 10 km
Las VegasLAS
11 h 25 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 5 m
€173-370
PDX · 10 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

MeasureLucernePortland
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCJ230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation436 m152 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsPortland International Airport (PDX)10 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucernePortland
City population86,234652,503
People per km²2,9631,736
Museums within 10 km1417
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4682

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lucerne or Portland 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. 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.