VacationSelector

Thessaloniki or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on places to eat and sights concentration 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.

ThessalonikiWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Thessaloniki leads by 37 points.37
ThessalonikiWashington DC
Score5518
Swim season months53
Beaches 10 km41
Coast distance0 km34 km
Water distance0 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 27 points.27
ThessalonikiWashington DC
Score5077
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6401,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1536
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 6 points.6
ThessalonikiWashington DC
Score4955
Museums within 10 km3483
Museums within 2 km of centre2255
Share of museums within 2 km %6566
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 6 points.6
ThessalonikiWashington DC
Score6761
Drinking venues within 4 km1,4071,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre805593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5758
Nightclubs within 4 km6154
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 23 points.23
ThessalonikiWashington DC
Score6542
Protected land share 50 km %2510
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %8394
Park area within 2 km39 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Thessaloniki leads by 3 points.3
ThessalonikiWashington DC
Score4138
Tourist attractions within 2 km167
Park area within 2 km39 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 20 points.20
ThessalonikiWashington DC
Score5676
Notable places within 2 km98305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 31 points.31
ThessalonikiWashington DC
Score7443
Price level global55.8100
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Thessaloniki leads by 10 points.10
ThessalonikiWashington DC
Score7262
Monthly daytime high9.7 °C to 32.1 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall21 mm to 56 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months90
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromThessalonikiWashington DC
AthensATH
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
10 h 25 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€188-242
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 30 m
€119-127
SKG · 14 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 50 m
€125-175
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 15 m
€151-156
SKG · 14 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ZurichZRH
2 h 20 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€117-203
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 20 m
€208-315
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
11 h 50 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

MeasureThessalonikiWashington DC
Official languageGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation6 m72 m
Main airportThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureThessalonikiWashington DC
City population309,617689,545
People per km²16,0423,896
Museums within 10 km3199
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre4582
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Thessaloniki 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.