VacationSelector

Ottawa or Rotterdam?

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

Your match

Ottawa
43
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Rotterdam
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage 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.

OttawaRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Rotterdam leads by 37 points.37
OttawaRotterdam
Score037
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km922
Coast distance423 km24 km
Water distance24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 8 points.8
OttawaRotterdam
Score6472
Restaurants within 2 km of centre684862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3446
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 28 points.28
OttawaRotterdam
Score3260
Museums within 10 km1541
Museums within 2 km of centre820
Share of museums within 2 km %5349
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
OttawaRotterdam
Score4449
Drinking venues within 4 km432542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre303378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7070
Nightclubs within 4 km3540
Nature & day trips. Rotterdam leads by 1 points.1
OttawaRotterdam
Score4142
Protected land share 50 km %810
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10079
Park area within 2 km122 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 16 points.16
OttawaRotterdam
Score4662
Tourist attractions within 2 km1127
Park area within 2 km122 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 1 points.1
OttawaRotterdam
Score5051
Notable places within 2 km7174
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 4 points.4
OttawaRotterdam
Score5458
Price level global8479.2
Daily budget€181
Year-round weather. Rotterdam leads by 3 points.3
OttawaRotterdam
Score5356
Monthly daytime high-4.9 °C to 27 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 94 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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Ottawa
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
Ottawa
No sunshine record
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. Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 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 fromOttawaRotterdam
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
7 h 45 m
€458-478
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
7 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
CancunCUN
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
Punta CanaPUJ
4 h 15 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
CalgaryYYC
4 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
8 h 25 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
4 h 50 m
€175-263
2 stops
YOW · 12 km
9 h 45 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

MeasureOttawaRotterdam
Official languageFrench, EnglishDutch
CurrencyCanadian Dollar (CAD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-5, UTC-4 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112 or 911
Elevation70 m10 m
Main airportOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureOttawaRotterdam
City population1,017,449664,311
People per km²3662,080
Museums within 10 km2040
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre6277
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ottawa 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). 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.