athens.taipei The Atlas of City Experiences
The Anti-Awards

24 rankings. Every one is the true extreme of a real measurement — there is no worst city, only cities magnificently bad at one specific thing.

All 24 rankings →
The weather6
The Sauna You Can’t LeaveThe Bedroom That Never CoolsThe Umbrella EconomyRain, By The MetreSixteen Thousand DaysThe Year Without a Window
The hours it keeps6
The Cinderella ClauseThe Early Bedtime AwardThe Sunday Ghost TownThe Breakfast DesertThe Great Lunch VanishingThe Part-Time City
Getting out5
The Great Escape IndexHardest City to Leave (In a Hurry)The Domestic BubbleThe Hibernating AirportThe Perth Meridian
The ground and the sky4
The Wobbliest GroundThe Volcano PartyThe Volcano Next DoorThe 3 p.m. Sunset Club
Everything else3
The Monoculture MenuThe Calendar of ExcusesA Gigabyte of Cats
Tools

Three ways to interrogate the atlas rather than read it.

Open the comparer →
Compare two cities Head-to-head on absurd terms only. No GDP, no cappuccino index. The year, month by month Where to be in each month, who has the most days off, and when the airports peak. Start from a goal Eat well at 2 a.m. · Work all day from a café — ranked by what the city keeps open.
How this is made

Every figure on this site states where it came from and what it cannot tell you.

Read the method →
Method & principles What we measure, what we refuse to guess, and why rhythm is never a claim about people. Sources Every corpus behind the atlas, with its licence. Books coming soon The long-form city profiles and the method book. Contact · request a city Tell us what the atlas is missing.
The index

126 cities across the atlas, by region — or browse the full A–Z.

Every city, A–Z →
Southern Europe21
RomeMilanBarcelonaMadridAthensLisbon
Western Europe20
LondonParisLuxembourgViennaAmsterdamDublin
North America & Caribbean18
New YorkMiamiAustinSan FranciscoLos AngelesSeattle
CEE & Balkans16
PragueBudapestWarsawBelgradeBucharestKraków
East Asia12
TokyoOsakaFukuokaSeoulBusanTaipei
South & Southeast Asia11
SingaporeBangkokKuala LumpurChiang MaiDa NangGeorge Town
🇬🇧 United Kingdom · metro 108k · 950 venues mapped

Bedford

Where Bedford places among 1,878 cities measured on the one thing that needs no editing — the hours the city keeps. Its strongest showing is shops open on sunday, where it ranks 32 of 1,704.

Nearest city 🇬🇧 Milton Keynes 22 km Nearest written profile 🇬🇧 London 📖 73 km

Typical weather

1981–present
JFMAMJJASOND
coldcool warmhot ▢ outlined = best time to visit
JFMAMJJASOND
Best time to visit Jul, Aug — mild (15–26 °C mean) and not wet months.

City Rhythm

measured

Opening hours, by kind of place

median across mapped venues
Food & drink950 places mapped
11:00–21:30
0006121824
2%
open past midnight
81%
open on Sundays
55h
open per week
10%
take a midday break
4%
open 24/7
Shops & errands374 places mapped
07:00–22:00
0006121824
0%
open past midnight
97%
open on Sundays
97h
open per week
Culture225 places mapped
09:45–17:00
0006121824
0%
open past midnight
61%
open on Sundays
28h
open per week
Services123 places mapped
09:00–17:30
0006121824
0%
open past midnight
33%
open on Sundays
40h
open per week

Vital absurdities

measured
0
muggy days a year
0
nights/yr the bedroom never cools
140
umbrella days a year
32 m
of rain since 1981
48
days over 30 °C, of 16,630
0
volcanoes within 100 km
554.8 km
to West Eifel Volcanic Field
0
quakes felt per decade (M4.5+, 100 km)
15:52
winter sunset (solar approx.)
16.8 h
longest day of the year
6
public holidays, 2024
14,505
km adrift · the Remote Index

The ranks

floor: 200 mapped venues
MeasureBedford RankNearest company
Kitchens open past midnight% of food & drink 1.5% 285 of 1,878 🇲🇽 Ensenada 1.6%🇯🇵 Fuji 1.6%🇮🇳 Kottayam 1.6%🇬🇧 Oxford 1.6%Bedford🇧🇷 Blumenau 1.5%🇦🇺 Cairns 1.5%🇩🇪 Chemnitz 1.5%🇬🇧 Hastings 1.5%
Hours open per weekmedian, food & drink 55 h 203 of 1,878 🇬🇧 Harrogate 55.5 h🇳🇿 Dunedin 55.4 h🇪🇸 Granollers 55.2 h🇩🇰 Odense 55.2 hBedford🇩🇪 Dresden 55 h🇩🇪 Gießen 55 h🇳🇱 Haarlem 55 h🇫🇮 Joensuu 55 h
Open before 8 a.m.% of food & drink 13.3% 339 of 1,878 🇫🇷 Le Havre 13.4%🇬🇧 Nottingham 13.4%🇬🇧 Swansea 13.4%🇯🇵 Asahikawa 13.3%Bedford🇪🇸 Cartagena 13.3%🇦🇷 Cipolletti 13.3%🇪🇸 Cáceres 13.3%🇱🇺 Luxembourg 13.3%
Vanish at lunch% taking a midday break 10.4% 284 of 1,878 🇵🇪 Pucallpa 10.5%🇺🇸 San Francisco 10.5%🇬🇧 Swindon 10.5%🇹🇼 Tainan 10.5%Bedford🇨🇳 Fangshan 10.4%🇩🇪 Flensburg 10.4%🇩🇪 Dortmund 10.3%🇩🇪 Hildesheim 10.3%
Never close at all% open 24/7 4.4% 187 of 1,878 🇪🇸 San Fernando 4.5%🇨🇱 Santiago 4.5%🇺🇸 Turlock 4.5%🇯🇵 Asahikawa 4.4%Bedford🇺🇸 Columbus 4.4%🇺🇦 Donetsk 4.4%🇺🇸 Little Elm 4.4%🇺🇸 Louisville 4.4%
Shops open on Sunday% of retail 96.7% 32 of 1,704 🇺🇸 Oklahoma City 96.8%🇺🇸 Piscataway 96.8%🇺🇸 Springfield 96.8%🇺🇸 Waukegan 96.8%Bedford🇮🇩 Denpasar 96.7%🇬🇧 Leicester 96.7%🇮🇷 Mashhad 96.7%🇵🇭 Nasugbu 96.7%

The same questions are asked of the 126 cities with a written profile, where each one gets its method and its full standings: kitchens open past midnight, hours open per week, open before 8 a.m., vanish at lunch, shops open on sunday.

← All 1,878 ranked cities