Hello!
My daughter and I will be heading to Italy in a couple weeks. We'll be heading to Pompeii from Rome by train and hope to book a 10:30 am tour in Pompeii. How long should we plan to get there from Rome? Is it reasonable to make a 10:30 am tour? Also, do you recommend purchasing train tickets ahead of time for our travels or purchase at train stations? We'll be traveling by train a total of 4 times during our trip.
Thanks so much for your advice!
The Rome Termini to Naples Centrale leg on high speed rail on the way to Pompeii you can save money by booking that in advance.
The Naples to Pompeii leg of the trip taking either the Circumvesuviana or the Campania Express you can buy in Naples Garibaldi next door on the same day as the price is fixed.
The combine train travel time (not counting the time it takes you to leave your hotel to get to Roma Termini and then to wait to transfer in Naples) between Rome and Pompeii is about 1 hour and 30 minutes
It seem there were plenty of Idle tour guides at Pompeii when we were there in May, so I think you do not really need to pay to book one in advance, just wait til you get there.
There was a post earlier today related to Rome to Pompeii as a day trip to help you maybe better understand
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/is-a-day-trip-from-rome-to-pompeii-a-good-idea-or-a-bad-one
I would not book a tour in advance. Really no need. Plenty of guides at the entrance. If you purchase tickets in advance between Rome and Naples you might have to able to take advantage of the deep discount - no refund, no change - tickets but at this late date all of those tickets are probably gone. So just buy you ticket when you get to Rome. You can buy the return ticket at the same time but it will only be good at the time you selection so you may want to wait to buy the return in Naples. The price is the same.
