VacationSelector

Lyon or Rotterdam?

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

Lyon
52
match

Wins on nightlife and year-round weather with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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.

LyonRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
LyonRotterdam
Score037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km2622
Coast distance253 km24 km
Water distance—24 km
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 7 points.7
LyonRotterdam
Score7972
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,691862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4046
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
LyonRotterdam
Score5560
Museums within 10 km5341
Museums within 2 km of centre2520
Share of museums within 2 km %4749
Unesco sites within 50 km25
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 9 points.9
LyonRotterdam
Score5849
Drinking venues within 4 km866542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre611378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7170
Nightclubs within 4 km4740
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 9 points.9
LyonRotterdam
Score3342
Protected land share 50 km %610
Landscape blanket share 50 km %60
Land share of disc %10079
Park area within 2 km120 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 3 points.3
LyonRotterdam
Score5962
Tourist attractions within 2 km2527
Park area within 2 km120 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km28
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 3 points.3
LyonRotterdam
Score5451
Notable places within 2 km8674
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon leads by 4 points.4
LyonRotterdam
Score6258
Price level global73.779.2
Daily budget€160€181
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 8 points.8
LyonRotterdam
Score6456
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 mm42 mm to 85 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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Lyon
No coastline within reach
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
2
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLyonRotterdam
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
2 h 5 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 55 m
no fares
GNB · 59 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 40 m
€184-250
1 stop
GVA · 111 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasureLyonRotterdam
Official languageFrenchDutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112 or 911
Elevation160 m10 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonRotterdam
City population519,127664,311
People per km²10,8382,080
Museums within 10 km4240
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km25
Distinct cuisines in the centre14877
Swim season, months above 21 °C–None

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lyon or Rotterdam 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). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.