Do not take this as gospel or any legal advice ... but this is what happened to us. We bought tickets on United to fly to Lisbon. Since only Continental at the time flew direct from the US to Lisbon, we ended up being routed from Denver - Chicago - Frankfurt - Lisbon. Spent 4 hours in Frankfurt at 6 AM. If anyone in the party is Mileage Plus Premier Exec you can use the United or Lufthansa Red Carpet Club. The Lufthansa one has food and a shower you can use - complete with towels, soap, shampoo, etc. By the time we got there, we'd been up about 24 hours, including 5 hours in the Frankfurt airport at 5 AM. Arrived on Easter Saturday and went sightseeing. Had Easter dinner at the Pizza Hut the next day!
We did have a brief problem which we found out about ahead of time .. thank heavens! Since we were staying longer than 90 days (94 to be exact) we had to prove to United that we were leaving Portugal sometime in there so we didn't stay in Portugal for 90 consecutive days. (I think they don't interpret the law correctly but that's their problem.) We bought a fully refundable ticket from Lisbon to Geneva (leaving the EU) and just showed it to United at the checkin area. Then when we got to Lisbon, we mailed the tickets back to our travel agent and she refunded them.
The other alternative would be to get a visa from Portugal but the Fulbright Commission did not really push that ... or just stay less than 90 days.
We arrived in Lisbon for Easter weekend so we'd made reservations at the Sheraton Hotel. Got a pretty good rate because of the weekend and we knew we'd want to do some sleeping. Took a cab from the airport. We used the cab voucher you can buy at the tourist bureau stand in the terminal. It's more expensive but the cab driver can't rip you off .. and they have a bad reputation for doing this with tourists. Another good hotel to stay in is the Holiday Inn - Continental. They do have a parking garage next to it where you can get a good taste of trying to park in the TINY TIGHT spaces.
We arranged with Renault to lease a car for the time we were in Portugal. They had the best rates by far. However, we decided NOT to pick it up until the day we were leaving Lisbon to drive to Evora. Wise decision! Lisbon is by far one of the hardest European cities we have ever dealt with. They make it very difficult to turn left so every route has to be planned out using right hand turns and the big traffic circles to change directions. Murray (another Fulbrighter) always allowed 45 extra minutes to find anything in Lisbon.
Beware of Holidays! The Wednesday before we left the US, I got email asking if we'd mind finding a place to stay on Easter Monday because the university Rector had decided at the last minute to declare Easter Monday a holiday. This was our first hint that organization is not a priority in the Portuguese management style.There would be no one around to let us into our accommodations. So, we made reservations at the IBIS hotel in Evora. It's a motel 6 type place but quite serviceable.
Other spring holidays include April 26, May 1, Corpus Christi (June). The university and the city were pretty much closed for those days. Go to the grocery store and stock up because the grocery stores will definitely be closed in Portugal on those days. Besides, it's quite interesting to see that Portuguese stores are just like ones in the US on the day before a holiday - packed!
In Evora