This Sunny European Capital is the World’s Happiest Place to Visit
If you are looking for a happy place to visit, you may want to head to Portugal. Lisbon was just named the world’s happiest holiday destination in a ranking of 47 cities.
The Holiday Happiness Index from BookRetreats looked at five things that could make a vacation a little better: sunshine, sleep, healthy food, nature and physical activity.
Researchers didn’t actually ask travelers how happy they were in each city. Instead, they looked at things that can affect someone’s overall well-being while they’re there.
Lisbon ended up doing well in several categories. It gets 2,828 hours of sunshine each year and has 49 square meters of green space per person. Nearly 10% of its restaurants were also considered healthy in the study.
Lisbon Has a Lot Going for It
Embedded media follows. Please allow a moment for it to load.
View this post on Instagram
Lisbon had the second-highest percentage of healthy restaurants out of all 47 cities. It also did well when it came to getting around on foot. The city is definitely hilly, but many popular attractions are close enough together that visitors can still walk between them.
Lisbon gets more than 2,800 hours of it each year, which makes spending time outside a little easier. The beach isn’t far away either. Cascais and Costa da Caparica are both less than an hour from the city by public transportation.
Here’s What They Looked At
BookRetreats put the ranking together with guidance from clinical psychologist and Harvard Medical School instructor Dr. Natalie Dattilo-Ryan.
Each of the five categories counted the same. For sunshine, researchers looked at the average number of sunny hours per year. The sleep score looked at noise and light pollution, while the food score was based on the percentage of restaurants classified as healthy.
They also looked at green space and how easy it was to walk between popular attractions. Portugal’s AICEP pointed out something important when it shared the results.
Orlando Came in Third
Helsinki, Finland, came in second. The city stood out for its green space and sleep-quality score. Orlando was No. 3 and the only U.S. city in the top 10. It gets about 2,930 hours of sunshine each year and also scored especially well for green space.
Athens and Edinburgh rounded out the top five. Madrid, Vienna, Budapest, Oslo and Vilnius finished out the top 10. Except for Orlando, every city on the list was in Europe.
