VacationSelector

Ottawa or San Sebastian?

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

Your match

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

San Sebastian
✓ Best match
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money 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.

OttawaSan Sebastian
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 55 points.55
OttawaSan Sebastian
Score055
Swim season months02
Beaches 10 km910
Coast distance423 km0 km
Water distance0 km
Places to eat. Ottawa leads by 9 points.9
OttawaSan Sebastian
Score6455
Restaurants within 2 km of centre684472
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3426
Museums & heritage. San Sebastian leads by 7 points.7
OttawaSan Sebastian
Score3239
Museums within 10 km1517
Museums within 2 km of centre87
Share of museums within 2 km %5341
Unesco sites within 50 km13
Nightlife. Ottawa leads by 4 points.4
OttawaSan Sebastian
Score4440
Drinking venues within 4 km432388
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre303338
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7087
Nightclubs within 4 km3512
Nature & day trips. San Sebastian leads by 15 points.15
OttawaSan Sebastian
Score4156
Protected land share 50 km %811
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10052
Park area within 2 km122 hectares70 hectares
Good for families. Ottawa leads by 16 points.16
OttawaSan Sebastian
Score4630
Tourist attractions within 2 km115
Park area within 2 km122 hectares70 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. San Sebastian leads by 4 points.4
OttawaSan Sebastian
Score5054
Notable places within 2 km7189
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 17 points.17
OttawaSan Sebastian
Score5471
Price level global8460.8
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. San Sebastian leads by 5 points.5
OttawaSan Sebastian
Score5358
Monthly daytime high-4.9 °C to 27 °C11.2 °C to 22.9 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 94 mm92 mm to 203 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
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Sea temperature, °C
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Daylight, hours per day
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Ottawa
No sunshine record
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3

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). San Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromOttawaSan Sebastian
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 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

MeasureOttawaSan Sebastian
Official languageFrench, EnglishSpanish
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
Elevation70 m6 m
Main airportOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinationsSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureOttawaSan Sebastian
City population1,017,449189,866
People per km²3663,118
Museums within 10 km2014
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km13
Distinct cuisines in the centre6245
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Ottawa or San Sebastian 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.