Has anyone had an unpleasant or bad tourguide experience at Pompeii? I'm not looking to name and shame, I'm just genuinely curious.
Edit: just to be clear, I’m not looking for suggested guides.
Edit 2: I'm also not looking for advice about touring Pompeii. I really just want your personal guide experiences.
RS recommends Mondo shared tours. We used them for Pompeii and were pleased. Check out their website. Have a great trip.
I can absolutely understand why you thought I was looking for a reference on a suggested guide, but I’m actually asking if anyone has had a bad experience.
No......
Nope, we had a FANTASTIC experience with our guided tour. Why do you ask?
I know you didn't ask this, but I wonder - have you considered just visiting the site and doing a self-tour? You can buy a guidebook while you're there - or probably even download an audioguide. It is so much nicer (for me, at least!) to move at your own pace. There is a lot to see and half the fun is just exploring. A guidebook will tell you all you need to know along the way.
(When I was there, I occasionally got behind a tour group and could hear the guide's narration which was basically word for word what I was reading in my guidebook!)
It was years ago but our tour guide in Pompeii was exuberant! Indeed after I discovered guides enhance the traveling experience, I can only recall 1 really bad guide I’ve had in my all years of travel. That was in Alaska— our guide curiously enough hailed from Oberlin Ohio which is close to where we came from. This led me to the theory that guides from Northern Ohio could be a problem. So here is my take: If you are in Pompeii and your guide says they are from northern Ohio consider finding another guide. But realize my sample size on drawing this conclusion has an N of 1. Small sample set.
Ah, one more thing. Rather than seeing the play, I often find reading the play can be just as rewarding. I can read at my own pace. A while back we saw Denzel Washington play Julius Caesar against Colm Feore on Broadway. Great — but at times they could have sped things up to get to the good parts!
My experience with guides has been very positive. The Rick Steves Guides I’ve had have been universally outstanding. But Pompeii is getting a little old in the tooth so, yeah, watch out for guides from Ohio
Happy travels
My tour guide from Mondo was fine, however I just checked back on my Trip Report from 2023 and I wrote that all the tour guides tended to cover the same primary sites over a 2-hour tour. Thinking about it, I may be disappointed if I did another 2-hour tour because it would likely cover the same stuff.
No, we had a great experience. We had a guided tour during our RS Southern Italy tour, and I'm glad we did. Made it so much more interesting than without a guide.
