Kinda. Pretty much. It’s been a minute though. I took the opportunity to buy a new rain jacket (one can’t have too many rain jackets in New Mexico, ho, ho). Grubb splurged on a lighter-weight, smaller suitcase.
Out comes the travel bin full of goodies. Neck pillows of all shapes and sizes, mini first aid kits, travel plug adaptors for just about anywhere in the world, travel size toiletries, tiny alcohol wipes, eco-sized sheets of laundry detergent, masks, etc. Not that we couldn’t buy this stuff in Portugal, but it’s always nice to have a little to start with so you don’t have to rush to a store to buy anything right away.
I think we’ve got all the sundries in hand. On to paperwork. I did need to renew my passport. Got that done last fall. Check!
There is additional documentation to gather because of this never-ending pandemic. We will need to upload copies of our Covid vaccination records and results of a Covid test taken within 72 hours of departure. In addition, Portugal requires a “locator” form to be submitted no sooner than 72 hours before the flight.
Makes me nervous to have so much documentation to submit to close to the flight.
The Covid test requirement is not clear. According to United Airlines (they have a handy “Travel Ready Center” on their site – I’m sure other airlines do too), we don’t need a test if we are vaccinated and we can show our CDC card (or a QR encoded record) to prove it. According to the Portuguese government website, however, we can only prove our vaccination with an EU Digital certificate unless we are from one of 35 countries outside the EU with a reciprocal agreement. Oddly, the U.S. is not one of those 35 countries. So we’ve booked tests for the Saturday before we leave. Just because I’m a “just in case” kind of person.
In the meantime, we both made sure we’ve got our QR coded vaccination record (through a New Mexico state app) added to our respective Apple Wallets.
To get back into the U.S. we will need a Covid test but they are readily available in Portugal – including express testing at the Lisbon airport.
We did an app check. Not having traveled abroad for a couple years, we needed to go through all our favorite travel apps and make sure we could still log in and use. Plus, investigate what apps we’ll want for Portugal – like maybe Omio, Bolt, Moovit and CP.pt.
Oh, and I dug up some spare Euros from the last trip. Always nice to have a little cash on landing – even though there are always abundant ATMs at the airports that will handily dispense Euros.