Ryanair in Persona Grata

A long time ago, millions of years before... well not that long...in 2003 , Porto had a small airport. It would soon grow bigger into it's current shape, a modern marvel of medium sized airports, but still it only transported per year less than 2 million people.

Porto Airport

I know it may sound awkward if you don't know where Porto is, or even if you imagine Porto as being a coastal city lost in Italy, but that is not the case. Porto is a pearl of history lost in Portugal, probably because the outside image of our country was, for many ages, Lisbon Lisbon and Lisbon x2.
As a consequence of that image, Porto was only known to a certain group of people who enjoyed wine, or to a few british who liked to travel north. A sad end to a beautiful city I know, but who cared if you couldn't reach Porto? Now they can, 6 million people do it every year.

That all changed when low cost companies arrived into the new airport. Many disregard the fact that before low cost, a trip to Madrid could cost around 200 euros. That's insane. You currently pay around 60 euros with return trip if you book with some fair distance, and if you get lucky you can get a 10 euro trip. 10 euro sirs ! That's 1/9th of the price you pay to go to Lisbon by train! Surely the target of the low cost companies was to get people from Europe to Porto, and thank you Ryanair, Easyjet , Transavia and so on, but as they opened the gates to Europe, people like me, who had absolutely no chance of traveling at high prices, saw an instant opportunity.

Ryanair Plane in Porto Airport

Rome, for example, was a destiny I thought impossible to reach until I was a grown man. Like really grown. 80 year old grown. Then in February Ryanair opens a direct route to Rome. Ok , it wasn't to the main airport but who cares? The other airport was also far and the only advantage was that one has train and the other doesn't. Meh, tomato tomato! I must say it really amazed be that for less than a 100 euros I could be in Rome, 4 days. Tell that to the older me, he would certainly say "Yeah right , stop using google earh". He wouldn't even say that since there was no google earth at the time (I gues...).

To conclude , I just want to say thank you low costs, but specially thank you Ryanair since you opened the most routes till now. I sure hope you can get a little bit more competition , which would help me go to other cities rather than every town in France.... but I get that , lots of Portuguese wanting to come home for the weekend.

See you soon , in Europe, somewhere.

Rome , with the Vatican in the background