Europe: Start voting now! Porto Airport and Lounge
In this musical spectacular…
- Who wants to go to Eurovision?
- Where did my wallet go? Off to Birmingham Airport
- SN2038 Birmingham Airport to Brussels National Airport
- Some time at Brussels Airport
- SN3819 Brussels National Airport to Lisbon Airport with the AeroSmurf
- Into Lisbon and The Tuk Tuk Hostel
- Exploring Lisbon with a Canon 100D
- The Eurovision Song Contest
- Off to Porto with Comboios de Portugal
- Time at Porto Airport
- FR8513 Porto Airport to Birmingham Airport
- To the trains!
- Eurovision… Douze points!
As for Porto Airport – it’s very elegant looking.
Classic departures board.
Lufthansa Group Check-in Area.
TAP Check-in Area.
After a walk around the airport and trying to work out the products on the TAAG Angola Airlines, as well as the awards the airport had won, we decided to clear security.
It seems the airport is good at winning awards…
It was pretty quiet when we cleared security – with both of us through in 5 minutes.
Through to security.
Whilst we were early air-side and negotiated the joy of the duty-free shop (on the minus side – no Kinder Eggs with Airbus A330 aircraft inside them), we popped out the other side.
Everyone goes through duty-free…
Adam kindly invited me to the lounge as he could guest me in. Whilst he was flying EasyJet and muggins on Ryanair – Adam had a priority pass membership.
Always helpful when neither of us feel like paying for lounge access. We followed the signs – and it lead us to the lounge on the upper level.
To Piso 3.
This lounge is the same used by… well.. pretty much anyone.
Universal for lounge.
Porto Airport lounge
With Adam swiping me in, we headed into the lounge. It has a lot of different seating options, from office-like workspaces, to lounge seating, to a mezzanine level, which overlooked the departures area.
General style seating.
Mobile phone charging area
Mezzanine.
The Mezzanine level it was.
With us finding a comfortable spot, food was the next order of business. And for a contract lounge, the food selection was reasonable, with custard tarts (good) croquettes of different sorts (good), sandwich (that looked sorry for themselves)
Egg tarts and other sweets.
Fruit and Pasta
More sweet things
Sandwiches and cereals.
There was also a reasonable selection of drinks too – both soft and more alcoholic.
The vodka was rough… but passable.
Traditional pre-flight beverage is traditional.
For entertainment, I tried in the in-lounge Wi-Fi. It was… sluggish to say the least.
In the public area there were performers playing a selection of music… and lets say I was trying not to suffer with the aural assault. But listening to “Perfect” by Ed Sherren being played… not well, it passed time.
They also played the Portuguese winning song from last year. But since we had that, we’ll have something else. Which can be equally an aural and visual shock. After all everyone loves a little Hard Rock Hallelujah! (Lordi – Finland 2006)
The angle we were sat at was good for watching arrivals and departures at Porto Airport.
Transavia Boeing 737-800
TAP Airbus A330
Brussels Airlines Airbus A319
TAP ATR 72-600
With our departures closing in, I fuelled up with another coffee, steeling myself for the oncoming storm.
We headed out of the lounge, and down to the departures level. With our flights going from the same area, we cleared the Schengen Border.
To the Non-Schengen area.
Adam headed down for the waiting bus to his EasyJet departures, whilst I headed to Gate 14 to await the arrival of my Ryanair plane. I cleared the final hurdle of Ryanair boarding, with my two bags being ok’d and with myself being directed to the priority queue.
Priority on the left, Non-priority on the right.
Whilst the plane was slightly delayed, eventually a plane turned up at Gate 11
Iberia Airbus A319
With the plane being serviced at Porto, there was a bit of delay as passengers disembarked.
eventually, we were given the green light to head downstairs to the plane
With that – I took my leave of Portugal.
NEXT: FR8351 Porto to Birmingham Airport
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