alaskancruzr

We always use the Hotel Principe Lisboa.  It’s a short taxi ride to the airport and has a metro stop right across the street.  You can also take the metro to the airport if you can handle your luggage.  We haven’t been there since right before covid but have used it 5+ times and always had a comfortable bed, quiet room, and great service. 

Lisbon has an excellent metro system with a station near the cruise port. We took hoho tours to get an overview and to locate metro stops near places that interested us.  We spent a month in Lisbon visiting Sintra, Cascais, Obidos and other places by train or tram.  No car needed and so much to see!  There is plenty to see inexpensively and on your own.  You can get tuk tuk tours also and customize them.

I get motion sickness very easily. I relied on the patch for many years without side effects but hated the expense.  Our last 3 cruises I have used bonine prophactivally daily and had no problems . I’ll be picking up the generic before this cruise. Thanks!

We have stayed numerous times at Hotel Principe Lisboa. The rooms are nice, clean, and quiet and the staff is great.  There is a metro station directly across the street, making it easy to get wherever you want.  Very reasonable prices.

10 hours ago, MissP22 said:

Thanks for the heads up. 😢

Since we're big movie buff's it looks like we'll be bringing lots of our own movies to enjoy. 

We saw more movies on the Grand than we had in the last several years combined. They loaded many movies each day and many newer ones…of course the entire ship was quarantined in their cabins so not really worth the trade off.  😉Did you get the same on the interrupted world cruise?

We prefer to use cash for daily purchases and credit cards for hotels or bigger ticket items.  Both our debit card and our credit cards are without fees (auto rebate of atm fees on debit) and we have not had a problem in finding an atm yet.  We haven't had the negative reaction the previous poster did with using cash and we have been doing so extensively for the last 4 years.  Just do whichever works best for you - it will be easier than you think!

If you take the train round trip from Oriente station, you can get the metro at the same station to go to the airport.  You simply take the elevator down to the lower floor when you get off the train.

Word of warning on the bikemyside tour with Daniel.  He took us on our first tour in Portugal in 2013...we will be headed back in a couple months for our 4th long term stay thanks in part to his introduction to what is now one of our favorite countries.  That first tour can be addictive!!

Don’t know your interests but we did a fantastic tour in Lisbon via motorcycle and side car.  

The current quote I got from him was 125€, round trip for 1-4 people.

We have toured by HoHo - great for an overview of the city with 3 different routes - one including Belem. We usually stay on for the entire route and then return to any place that interests us. No problem with waiting in our experience here. We've also used the tuk-tuk tours including a lovely tour that went as far as Cascais along the coast. Our favorite tour was the motorcycle/sidecar tour with bikemyside.com. Completely customized - one of us in the sidecar and the other behind the driver (Daniel was excellent!). You can avoid all the cruise crowds and get a truly unique view of beautiful Lisboa. The metro is also a great way to get around - easy to use and inexpensive.

I just checked my hair dryer and it is dual voltage as are some of the everyday curling/flats irons etc. You might want to check to make sure you need more than just an adapter for yours. My iphone, ipad, macbook, and my husband's pc are all automatic dual voltage so we haven't needed a converter at all (and have been in Europe for months at a time during the last 3 years).

That's good to know. We were just coming to the end of a fight with cancer when I planned this trip and I wasn't as focused on details as usual or I would have read the rules enough to know that I had to count days at sea between ports. Next time I will be prepared! I appreciate all the responses...thanks.

Can't hurt. I'll give it a try. Thanks!

That was my biggest concern...how to get it stamped while on the cruise?

So, theoretically, if you spent a week in a Schengen country.(first week in January, let's say)...came home to the states...ran out the rest of your 180 days in the States or a non-Schengen country (now we are at the end of June)....you couldn't go back to a Schengen country until 90 more days had passed? (beginning of October).

 

 

That seems a bit harsh :confused:

New definition as of 2013 “90 days in any 180-day period […]“. “The date of entry shall be considered as the first day of stay on the territory of the Member States and the date of exit shall be considered as the last day of stay on the territory of the Member States. ” European Commision "The new definition simplifies the calculation, and is based on a “rolling” 180 days from the date of entry. This means on any given day, you need to look back to the previous 180 days, and you must not have stayed in the Schengen zone for more than 90 days in that period, including entry and exit dates."

Sounds like they have corrected that issue by making it rolling.

Land Lover: According to an article in the Telegraph "The problem is being blamed on the introduction of tighter European Union-introduced border controls in Schengen, the border-free area that incorporates most EU member states. New rules, which were introduced after a series of terror attacks in Europe, mean checks against a series of databases are now carried out on each passenger from non-Schengen countries. At some airports, flight delays have increased by 300 per cent compared to last year."

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the rule that I (just traveling with a US passport) can visit one or many Schengen countries for a maximum of 90 days total during every 180 day period? My understanding is that one can do the 90 days continuously in one or many Schengen countries or periodically enter a non Schengen (such as the U.K.). I thought the "reset" happens at the 180 day mark which would give me another 90 days during the next 180?

 

(The BIG question is how long between the two 180 days do you need to be out of Schengen territory? Is it 90 days before you can start your second 180 ? .... Kathy)

 

 

Mike

per the Department of State

"As a U.S. citizen, how long can I stay in the Schengen area without a visa?

• With a valid U.S. passport, you can stay up to 90 days for tourism or business during any 180 day period. Do not overstay! You must wait an additional 90 days before applying to re-enter the Schengen area.
  

So you are right on both counts. (your passport also has to be valid for at least 90 days beyond your planned departure date from the zone) Just talked to a friend in England who said that rules are being enforced much more strictly now and they need to be at the airport 3-4 hrs before international flights because it's causing such backups!

Thanks for the info. This would have been so much easier if I'd counted right the first time!!

If I read your plans correctly you are on a round-trip Dover cruise September 11-25; touring Europe on your own September 25 to November 23, then sailing a B2B Venice-Rome November 23-December 5 and Rome-Ft Lauderdale December 5-22. (Niiiice...:p)

 

So your Schengen clock will reset on September 25 when you disembark in Dover. And even if you spend your entire land trip in the Schengen zone you will exit the EU on November 27 when Pacific Princess calls at Kotor, Montenegro. Which puts you well under 90 consecutive days, even if counting from the first day you arrive from the US (which you shouldn't have to due to reentering the UK in the interim).

(But to answer the original question: I've not taken a European cruise on Princess but on the lines I have our passports were held and stamped each time we moved from an EU country to a non-EU or vice-versa)

Sorry, I should have been clearer. We will enter the zone on Sept. 13th when we land in Olso (flight from JFK) then continue on to Portugal where we will stay until Nov. 23rd when we fly to Venice to board the cruise ship. If I understand the rules correctly, the only day outside the zone is the one in Montenegro and if they do stamp us in and out it would still leave us with 91 days out of 180. So...we added the side trip to Gibraltar during our land portion to give us some leeway. I'm just not sure where we get officially "checked out" of the zone during the cruise so can't figure out our exact count and make sure we don't run into problems the next time we try to enter it.

Does anyone know when or whether Princess stamps our passport and/or records our exit date from the Schengen countries? We will be taking a TA cruise to return to the U.S. after an extended stay in the Schengen zone. We would be at 92 days in Tenerife (our last port). We've decided to take a 3 day side trip to Gibraltar during our stay just to be safe but I'm curious if we really would have had a problem.

I just got our rental confirmed. Quick on the quote but about a week for the confirmation.

We just returned from our cruise and we had the best tour ever in Lisbon. We went with bikemyside (.com) on a motorcycle & sidecar with Daniel as our driver/guide. Out of all the excursions we've done, this was our absolute favorite. Daniel was everything you could hope for - professional, prompt, full of interesting information, easy to understand, and able to take us to places that we couldn't have gone on any other tour. There was a transportation strike the day we were there and everyone on the ship was talking about the long lines and delays on their tours. Daniel avoided all the traffic and all the crowds and gave us an amazing tour of his beautiful city. Everywhere we went people we pointing us out and smiling and, I'm sure, wishing they we in our place.

We have a tour booked with him for December and one for December 2009 - so it's not too early for you to book;) . He has been really quick at replying to my emails. levibaron@bumpiingtours.com