Managing Madrid’s Metro

How to become an accomplished user of Madrid’s Metro System:
If you’re arriving by plane, which the majority of our students do, the first exposure you will have to Madrid’s public transport system is the Metro. The Metro is by far the easiest way to travel round Madrid. An intricate web of 12 different lines will get you pretty much wherever you want to go in and around the centre of Madrid, and one trip across Zone A costs just 1,50 – the cheapest fare in any capital city. A ten trip ticket costs 9,30 and lasts a month, and for frequent Metro users it is extremely cost-effective to buy a monthly travel pass (Abono) which costs just 30 Euros for those under 23 years old. It costs an extra Euro to get in and out of the airport Metro, but you don’t have to pay this if you have a monthly Abono. The Abono is also useful during the winter months or the rare days when it rains in Madrid, and you’d just rather get the Metro two stops rather than walk ten minutes in wet shoes and hood pulled down over your face so you bump into a load of similarly crotchety people.
Metro maps are readily available in handy pocket form or emblazoned across the station walls, so if you’ve started out unprepared that won’t last long. Each station has a list of the upcoming stations as well as all the corresponding lines, so you can plan any journey within a couple of minutes. First thing to get a grip of is all the different lines, each assigned its own colour AND number – master either one first, then gradually you’ll be able to correspond all colours with numbers and feel like king of the Metro. Next step is to know which bits to avoid – Nuevos Ministerios (Line 8, pink or Line 6, grey) is huge, horrible, and difficult to negotiate, so try and skip round that one if you can. You usually need to go via Nuevos Ministerios to get to the airport, but if you’ve got heavy suitcases you’re probably better off – depending on where you live – going to Atocha Renfe (Line 1, Light blue) and getting the bus to the airport from there. It leaves every 20 minutes, takes 40 minutes to get there and costs 2 Euros, so is all in all pretty convenient.
photo via: Picture from Valmoniz.wordpress.com