Any experience with Pompeii and Capri tours?
 

Hi,

My wife and I are traveling to Italy next month and are looking into taking a 2 day tour (from Rome) of Pompeii and Capri (with overnight stay in Sorrento). Google search reveals a bunch of companies offering these types of tours in the 260-300 euro (per person) range.

Does any one have experience with these kinds of tours? Are these reasonable prices?

Thanks,

Hari

Decided against this - heard Capri is kinda a tourist trip - going to Florence instead. However, still considering doing a 1-day trip to Pompeii. I see the Enjoy Rome offers a simple bus ride to and fro. Has any one done this? Also, is it worth doing one of those Naples-Pompeii one-day guided tours?

Hari R....Perhaps I can help by pointing up a mistake that we made. We visited Pompeii and toured the site on our own using a guidebook. We have done this sort of thing successfully many times but it was a mistake for Pompeii. Once inside the site there are very few signs to indicate where you are. We had lots of difficulty finding our way and missed much of the potential that we knew was there. A guide would have been a big help - we should have had one.

Can one get a (English-speaking) guide at a reasonable price after arriving in Pompeii? Or would it better to just get a guided tour (from Rome) from the get-go?

We were in Pompeii just a few weeks ago - WOW! We thought about a guide and then opted against it. They offer a tour of about 2 hours. We decided to use the audio guide instead, it came with a detailed layout of the town. This was a great decision. The detail and history offered on the audiotour is extensive and very interesting. We walked the town for over 5 hours, and although we didn't see quite everything, we were very satisfied and impressed with what we saw. (Note - unfortunately some of the sites were closed, but you could still listen to the details on the audio system). We would have missed so much just taking a guided tour...

Travel Bug - Was the audio guide a private one with headphones like in museums, or was it something that everyone in your family could listen to at once? We are going in a month and I've been wondering about whether or not to hire a guide. Thanks!

When I was last there, the Audio guide was a large mobile phone type device. on various locations are numbers - then there are sub options. For example, in the ruins of a food shop would be a small number 32. pressing 32 on the audio guide would tell you about it, then it would give you several options such as 321 for information on roman eating habits, 322 for a roman recipe, 323 for Pliny the youngers diary entry on eating in Pompeii etc.

The personal audio guide are for individuals, just like in museums. These, plus the accompanying map, made it very easy for us to navigate and learn our way through Pompeii.

Like willit and bill_boy said, these are individual portables. They just hook onto your waistband and away you go (the booth will give you the introduction number to start with so you can get the background before you begin your self-guided tour). You will be asked to leave a piece of ID (my husband left his driver's licence) that is returned when the headsets are turned in.

If I take the Eurostar early train from Rome to Naples, is it better to

a) go to Pompeii right away, do the audio tour, and get back to Naples in the afternoon to see the archeological museum ? OR
b) see the archeological museum first and then go to Pompeii?

Also, when would be a reasonable time to take a train back from Naples to Rome that day?

ttt

Official guides to Pompeii excavations are for hire at the gates to the site.

We were a group of 10 and were so glad we had our guide (Luigi). We all seemed to have so many questions, which he was able to answer.

Have a wonderful trip.

Byrd

There appear to be some conflicting views on which is better to go to first - the Naples archeology museum or Pompeii. Can some one comment on this?

Also, I noticed that the last Eurostar train from Naples (on a Monday) leaves some what early. Are the IC trains a reasonable alternative?