VacationSelector

San Diego or Thessaloniki?

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, 1 point apart

San Diego
58
match

Wins on good for families and year-round weather with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
59
match

Wins on value for money 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.

San DiegoThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 8 points.8
San DiegoThessaloniki
Score6355
Swim season months15
Beaches 10 km424
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. San Diego leads by 13 points.13
San DiegoThessaloniki
Score6350
Restaurants within 2 km of centre823640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2715
Museums & heritage. Thessaloniki leads by 5 points.5
San DiegoThessaloniki
Score4449
Museums within 10 km5934
Museums within 2 km of centre3022
Share of museums within 2 km %5165
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 17 points.17
San DiegoThessaloniki
Score5067
Drinking venues within 4 km6151,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre408805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6657
Nightclubs within 4 km3161
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 10 points.10
San DiegoThessaloniki
Score5565
Protected land share 50 km %625
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5283
Park area within 2 km308 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 34 points.34
San DiegoThessaloniki
Score7541
Tourist attractions within 2 km4016
Park area within 2 km308 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km31
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 16 points.16
San DiegoThessaloniki
Score4056
Notable places within 2 km4098
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 31 points.31
San DiegoThessaloniki
Score4374
Price level global10055.8
Daily budget—€125
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 16 points.16
San DiegoThessaloniki
Score8872
Monthly daytime high18.6 °C to 25 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 56 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months99
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
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
San Diego
No sunshine record
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan DiegoThessaloniki
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
MunichMUC
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 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

MeasureSan DiegoThessaloniki
Official language–Greek
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Euro (EUR)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation129 m6 m
Main airportSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan DiegoThessaloniki
City population1,386,932309,617
People per km²1,43816,042
Museums within 10 km2631
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre4445
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow San Diego or Thessaloniki 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. 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.