If anyone has done this, I would appreciate your advice/feedback.
Also, I've read Rick's advice on how to get to Pompeii from Rome, but I've never bought train tickets in Italy. Would it be better to order them in advance online or is it okay to wait until we arrive in Rome?
I think buying train tickets online is a big pain-in-the-bottom....the Trenitalia site is awful and it always takes me forever to get it to actually take a credit card...so...I would just buy in Italy (as long as it's not a busy holiday weekend)- the machine/kiosks are very easy and you can touch the screen for many languages and I've never had a problem with it taking my credit card :-) Last trip, I went over to the train station when I arrived at FCO airport and booked all my train travel for our trip right then and there.
p.s. have to add though -I really think Pomeii and Naples are WAY too far and WAY to much to see and do for a day trip! I would probabaly stay the night in Naples.
It's a long day trip but it can be done. First leg is Rome to Naples on Trenitalia. The faster AV trains can do this in 90 minutes. Slightly slower trains take 2hrs. Then, you transfer over to the private Circumvesuviana train system for the Naples to Pompeii leg. Overall, you have about 6hrs of train and train station time. The rest you can use for touring.
Or, Viator has a bus tour of Pompeii out of Rome. It includes a short stop in Naples as well. The cost starts at $174 per person so it's not inexpensive.
You don't need advance tickets. You can't get them ahead for the Circumvesuviana train anyway.
Rome was our first trip to Italy, as novices, we booked it all through GoToday Travel. Under their tours option, we chose the Pompeii trip; I'm forgetting the name of the tour group (but you could find it on GoToday's website probably) but they did send a shuttle around to all the hotels to collect everyone. It was informative, (and I loved Pompeii and they did stop at Amalfi and let us take pics.)--but no eating on the bus! We also had to go through some corny touristy stuff--touring a cameo factory with a sales spiel, and then later, on the way home, we stopped in Sorrento to see a furniture factory, again, another touristy sales pitch. Wiser, my husband and I ducked into the loo to skip the tour and then took off to spend a delightful two hours touring Sorrento by foot and grabbing a paninni and sfogliatelle! It was a long and tiring day, but we have really good memories. I think Scala Reale offers private tours of Pompeii, too. We've had two other amazing tours with them.
