VacationSelector

Lucerne or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Washington DC
✓ Best match
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.

LucerneWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Washington DC leads by 18 points.18
LucerneWashington DC
Score018
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km161
Coast distance669 km34 km
Water distance34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 30 points.30
LucerneWashington DC
Score4777
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2691,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2536
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 15 points.15
LucerneWashington DC
Score4055
Museums within 10 km2383
Museums within 2 km of centre1355
Share of museums within 2 km %5766
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 33 points.33
LucerneWashington DC
Score2861
Drinking venues within 4 km2021,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre151593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7558
Nightclubs within 4 km1154
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 17 points.17
LucerneWashington DC
Score2542
Protected land share 50 km %710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %10094
Park area within 2 km29 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Lucerne and Washington DC are level on 38.
LucerneWashington DC
Score3838
Tourist attractions within 2 km157
Park area within 2 km29 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 41 points.41
LucerneWashington DC
Score3576
Notable places within 2 km29305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Washington DC leads by 8 points.8
LucerneWashington DC
Score3543
Price level global110.5100
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 9 points.9
LucerneWashington DC
Score5362
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm65 mm to 108 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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Washington DC
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). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
9 h 30 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
9 h 5 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MadridMAD
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
14 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 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

MeasureLucerneWashington DC
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-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation436 m72 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneWashington DC
City population86,234689,545
People per km²2,9633,896
Museums within 10 km1499
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4682
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 Lucerne 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.