Faro

Introduction

Faro is located along the Algarve, Portugal's southern coastal region. It's a major gateway to the entire coast/region with good transportation options, mainly by air.

Weather

Faro has a great climate with warm summers from June to September when temperatures average between 25 °C and 30 °C. Nights are around 20 °C. Occasionally, temperatures hit 40 °C. Winters last from December to March, when daytime temperatures are between 15 °C and 19 °C and nights around 10 degrees. Most of the rain falls during the wintermonths while summers are very dry.

Getting There

By Plane

Faro Airport (FAO) is about 2.5 kilometres from Faro. It's one of the busier airports in the summer season from April to October, though much quieter the rest of year. Quite a few airlines, including many charter airlines and some budget airlines serve the region.
Over 10 car rental firms are located at the airport. The airport is also close to the A22 toll free highway, with connections throughout the Algarve and direct to Lisbon and Spain.

Sleep

Keep Connected

Internet

Wifi is common in many places in Portugal, including hotels, restaurants and coffee bars. Free wifi along the Algarve coast is available in many places. Internet cafés can still be found in most larger cities and tourist areas though.

Phone

See also: International Telephone Calls

Portugal's international telephone code is 351. The general emergency number is 112.

There are three mobile telephone operators in Portugal: TMN, NOS and Vodafone.

Each provider offers a variety of prepaid (Pré-Pagos) and contract (pós-pagos) SIM cards, both of which are available to foreigners. It generally means much lower rates for calls and especially internet. Be sure to switch off data roaming if you don't buy a local SIM card, as prices for internet are very high.

Post

CTT is the national postal service of Portugal. It has relatively fast and reliable services and it takes several days to over a week for your post to arrive within other European countries, more so if you send post to North America or Australia. Post offices (correios) have varying opening hours, but in general post offices are open on weekdays from 08:30am-6:00pm and on Saturday mornings until 12:30. More information about offices, costs and other details can be found at the CTT website. It's a relatively efficient but also relatively slow postal service. If you want to send packages overseas, you'd better use international companies like FedEx, DHL, TNT or UPS, as they are competitively priced, fast and very reliable.

External Links