My wife and I just returned from a marvelous day tour of Pompeii and the lesser-known but equally significant site of Herculaneum. We were on a 9 day cruise of the western Mediterranean and stopped in Sorrento for one day.
I don't recall exactly how I learned about our guide, Pina Espositio, as she does not have a web site, but from I first contact I had with her by email [email protected] I felt I had found an incredible resource; my wife and I were not disappointed. She is a scholar of Greco-Roman history in Campania and particularly Pompeii and Herculaneum. Pina is truly an individual tour guide (not an employee or staff member of a larger organization). She met our group of four as soon as we stepped off the tender in Sorrento and over the course of the day shared her encyclopedic knowledge of Pompeii and Herculaneum with us in a most personal and easy-to-understand way. Most importantly she placed what we were seeing into a much broader and rich description of the many cultures which inhabited the sites before the Romans and the physical vestiges of these many cultures. Moreover, she described the roles of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the social, political and economic amalgam of cultures at the time of the eruption on August 24, 79 C.E.
Pina was very mindful of our ship's schedule and returned us to Sorrento just steps from the tender with ample time to return to the ship. For us, Pina was a 5-star tour guide, from the time we met right down to the hug we received at the end of the tour. We feel we found not only a great tour guide, but a new Neapolitan friend.