For The Love Of Port

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/desti ... -port.html

1. I didn't realize you could get rooms at the Yeatman for so cheap ("from £137.50 a night").
2. I can soon make it a one-stop trip, Denver->London->Porto, and I suspect this will help others as well. (''British Airways (ba.com) will commence services from London Heathrow in March.")

Eric Menchen wrote:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/desti ... -port.html

1. I didn't realize you could get rooms at the Yeatman for so cheap ("from £137.50 a night").
2. I can soon make it a one-stop trip, Denver->London->Porto, and I suspect this will help others as well. (''British Airways (ba.com) will commence services from London Heathrow in March.")

That's a huge deal for me, as my normal trip requires overnights in London both ways. That usually turns out great due to the Port crowd there, but it does mean that London->Porto->London is intra-EU travel and so subject to their flight rules. Which is how TAP tried to charge me 484 Euros for an extra bag on one trip. No, that's not a typo.

Glenn, I feel your pain. I've experienced the TAP nonsense too. Always have to pay for the xtra bag which sucks and there is NO winning when it comes to discussions with TAP agents ... and if you got around paying that fee ... you are my new hero!

Roy Hersh wrote:Glenn, I feel your pain. I've experienced the TAP nonsense too. Always have to pay for the xtra bag which sucks and there is NO winning when it comes to discussions with TAP agents ... and if you got around paying that fee ... you are my new hero!

Add Stewart and I to your hero list. We both were checking in at the Porto airport and were way over their new weight/luggage limit. One I may add, they didn't tell anyone about ahead of time. Especially, those of us who bought tickets 6 months earlier. The charge was going to be some astronomical fee as mentioned. Somehow, not sure how, but we were able to convince them to wave the fee. That never happened again

Roy Hersh wrote:... and if you got around paying that fee ... you are my new hero!

Well... not exactly. :)

The reason they wanted to charge me 484 Euros was because one of my bags was overweight by several kg. Their overweight fees are a scam - it's by the kilogram, and the cost for each kg essentially doubles. So 1 kg over is 1 Euro (not the actual fee - it's higher), 2 kg over is 1 Euro + 2 Euros, 3 kg over is 1 Euro + 2 Euros + 4 Euros, etc. Just plain crazy and it adds up insanely fast.

In my case, I had 2 bags (which was the limit) and the 2nd one was slightly underweight. I noticed (and pointed out) that if I had a 3rd bag that I would be easily underweight in total, so why couldn't I just pay the 3rd bag fee? She said she couldn't do that, but that there was a vendor down the hall who would sell me a flimsy duffle bag if I wanted to re-arrange the contents of my luggage. So I did that, buying the bag for something like 20 Euros and then paying the 40-50 Euro "3rd bag" fee. I made sure to point out that I was now bringing even more weight onto the plane because she'd made me buy another bag, so their fuel costs were going to increase. I was sorely tempted to buy a couple of bottles of cheap booze or something to max out my weight on 3 bags, but decided it wasn't worth the effort.

The moral of the story is threefold: 1) don't fly TAP, 2) travel light when traveling around Europe, and 3) travel with someone so that you have more baggage flexibility while on intra-European legs of your trip. European travel regulations are vastly different than US and International regulations.

Luckily, British Airways now flys to Porto.

Glenn E. wrote:don't fly TAP

Lately, I've been flying American/Iberia through Madrid. It's pretty stress free and the Madrid airport is amazing large and uncrowded. Iberia *did* charge me a baggage fee of €70 when it should have been €50 because I purchased before they raised the fee... but there was no getting that through to them at Porto... so I just had to pay it.

I certainly will look at BA next trip! I have a lot of American miles and BA is a partner.

British Airways will only fly in/out of Porto on Thursdays and Sundays . That's OK, but does mean that I'd have to leave on Wednesday to get there. It's clearly designed for 3 day weekend trips. That's great for Portugal Tourism!
The service starts March 30th.

I've learned one thing flying with TAP. whatever take-off time is, to TAP that means the time you board. So you must add in about another 30-40 minutes before you push back from the gate. That means you will be late arriving at your next stop. Bad news if you have a short layover. This drives me, who is a timely person, nutty.

In TAPs defence, I got to Porto about 45 mins early when I flew there from Newark on Oct 24th.
I was supposed to get there at 715am and was outside by 630am.
And the food is much tastier than on other airlines, and staff much better looking.

Miguel Simoes wrote: And the food is much tastier than on other airlines, and staff much better looking.

True :)

And even in steerage class, they will give you one of those sip sized bottles of Port, if you ask nicely on TAP, sometimes two during the flight.