We plan to visit Pompeii next month. We added a day to our tour in order to do this, and it's on us to find a way to get there. There are a dizzying number of options for this. Does anyone have experience with which is better, Get your Guide or Viator? And how do we get from our hotel in Rome to Pompeii? (I suppose that is explained in the tour selected, although it's not spelled out very well at all.) Thank you so much for any information.
Posted by
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
4597 posts
Pompeii is huge and most tours from Rome will only spend 2 hours on a whirlwind tour of the highlights and then it's back on the bus for the drive back. It's easy to get to by train; take a fast train to Naples and then head downstairs at the train station and take the 35 minute ride on the Circumvesuviana train that drops you off at the entrance to Pompeii.
We used Mondo tours and met our guide at the gate. https://www.sharedtrips.com/shared-city-tour/pompeii/51/0900am-pompeii#tour-details, it was about a 3 hour tour and then we went off on our own to explore for a few more hours.
Posted by
Chicago
557 posts
In 2022, I visited Pompeii for day tour, leaving that morning from Rome. Would you consider independent travel to see Pompeii? If so, you have to go from Rome to Naples and then book a shuttle from Naples to the Pompeii site.
There are two train operators with service between Rome and Naples, Trenitalia and Italotreno. Purchase from either https://www.trenitalia.com/en.html or https://www.italotreno.com/en; I think I used Trenitalia. Both operate regular-speed service or fast service. I bought a fast-service ticket to get me to Naples in 1 hour, 15 minutes.
Naples is 20 miles away from Pompeii. I used CitySightSeeing to book a shuttle from Naples to the Pompeii site: https://www.city-sightseeing.it/shuttle-bus-naples-pompeii/. The bus stop is right outside Naples's main train station. The bus drops you right in front of the Pompeii ticket booth.
If you want a guided tour of Pompeii, there are dozens of guides who will meet you at the gate. Rick Steve's book walks you through the entire Pompeii site. Lonely Planet is also good.
Posted by
Calgary
1742 posts
Get Your Guide and Viator are reseller sites. That is, they resell tours offered by other companies.
We used The Roman Guy (aka The Tour Guy) for this. They have a meeting spot at a metro station, but we opted to pay a little extra to be picked up at our hotel. It was a wonderful day, and we're really glad we did it. We'd heard about Pompeii since we were children, and my husband, in particular, really wanted to go there. We spent about 3 hours there, and we felt like that was a good amount of time. We didn't see it all, but we saw a lot, and felt happy with what we saw. The guide we had was excellent. He comes from a family of Pompeii guides and grew up nearby.
https://theromanguy.com/tours/italy/rome/rome-to-pompeii-day-trip