Student travel in Madrid

I'm going to introduce you to the greatest invention of all time: The ABONO!

Unless you choose to live in Moncloa (which I've heard is a little bit boring! ), you are inevitably going to need to get the metro to uni, assuming you choose Complutense! 1. 50 doesn't seem much for a single on the metro but trust me it adds up very quickly!

Although they offer ten trip tickets, your best bet is to invest in an Abono Joven. The Abono Joven is like a student railcard. The one for Zone A is 33. 50 euros a month and gets you pretty much everywhere you want to go unless you're travelling further out of the city centre. As long as you take 22 trips in a month you have made your money back, and although on paper that seems like a lot, if you're using the metro to get to and from uni every day, you should be able to get through those journeys in just two weeks!

When I arrived I didn't know anything about the Abono and by the looks of the mad rush around mid October, niether did many other people! I recommend filling in the application form online here about a week before you're planning on coming out so you can simply go and collect it from one of the selected stations when you arrive and begin saving straight away!

If you don't know your Spanish address yet you might need to wait for that before you can apply but it will still save you a lot of time because getting and appointment once everyone has clocked on to the idea is a nightmare!

The metro in Madrid is really easy to use and much cleaner, brighter and bigger than the tube in London, as well as super cheap! The abono also allows you to get to the Airport, which is normally a 5 euro single so you really do make great savings and I recommend getting it as soon as you can!

Photo taken from here

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