Getting from Porto Airport to the city

The metro

Porto has one of the better airport connections in southern Europe: line E (violet) runs from a station beneath the terminal to Trindade in the city centre in about 25 to 30 minutes.

The Andante card, and why the fare confuses people

Porto's ticketing is zone-based and card-based, and both halves catch visitors.

• The airport sits in zone Z4, the outermost ring. A Z4 single is EUR 2.25 - not the base fare you may have read.
• The fare loads onto an Andante card. The reusable paper Andante Azul costs about EUR 0.60, charged once, on top of your first journey.
• A first-time traveller therefore pays roughly EUR 2.85 to get into town: the card plus the Z4 ticket.
• Keep the card. It reloads for every later journey, so the EUR 0.60 is a one-off, and Porto's system is cheap once you are in it.

Machines and a ticket office are in the terminal before the platform. Buying the ticket without the card, or a base-zone ticket instead of Z4, are the two ways this goes wrong.

At the other end

• Trindade is the hub where the metro lines meet, so one change reaches almost anywhere in the city.
• Line E continues to Estadio do Dragao past the centre.
• For Gaia and the port lodges, change at Trindade for line D across the Dom Luis I bridge - the upper deck of which is the metro, and the view is the best free thing in Porto.