Rome Day Trip to Amalfi, Positano, Pompeii - by car

Get an early start, the drive to the Amalfi Coast will take some time. Pompeii is a very large area, I usually spend at least four hours there, you will need at least two or three. The artifacts from Pompeii are in rhe Archeological Museum in Naples, I wouldn't recommend driving in the city. You may not have time to stop there, anyway. Keep in mind that sights may close earlier in the fall (earlier sunset).

In terms of flexibility, apart from deciding where to stop, you won't have much because of your schedule. An overnight in Sorrento would be ideal.

I don't see that as a day trip either. It requires about 2 days to enjoy. In February, a quiet month, we took a private driver from Sorrento to Paestum then back to Sorrento via the Amalfi Coast. Aside from a couple stops (2 hrs in Paestum, 1 hr in Ravello) the trip took most of the daylight. The drive to Naples and back alone from Rome would take a good portion of the day, and unless you're just sightseeing from the car (and bypassing the 2 hr minimum you need for Pompeii Scavi) you should take an overnight in Sorrento (quieter night there than Naples!). In Naples, have the pizza and see the national archaeological museum (a must to really appreciate Pompeii). You can ride the Circumvesuviana from Sorrento (or Naples) to the Pompeii ruins (though you can pick Herculaneum instead, or better yet see both - the entrance ticket would include each). The next day would be ideal to leave Sorrento south to see Paestum (wonderful ruins), stop in a local cheese factory, then up the Amalfi Coast and back to Rome. I've been in the area 3 times, and even with practice I don't see how it could all be done in a day, especially with the drive from and to Rome.

I'm sure it's cooler in October, but I've heard that it's better to do Pompeii in the morning to escape the killer sun. (It was drizzling our May day in Pompeii, so we didn't get overheated.) It would be useful to know if this is your first time driving in Europe. As noted in another thread currently on this board ( started by "anne"), this is a long outing for "day trip." And you have selected a trip that is particularly suited for public transportation, rather than something that's hard to do with public transportation.

Having hired a car and driver to see Positano and Amalfi (from 5 nights in Sorrento) in May, 2014, I don't have first-hand driving experience in Southern Italy. But you are overlooking a lot of irritating details about your particular drive: Controlled-access highways don't have much to see, there's lots of traffic and construction from Naples on, you didn't mention any desired stops before Naples, you didn't say you can drive a standard transmission, Positano has one lane of traffic in either direction and no other road through town, free parking is close to non-existent from Naples and on to the A.C. and the garages are torturous turnoffs and expensive.

Having spent the night in Naples, I can tell you that driving in Naples is roughly like driving through the San Gennaro festival in New York City on Saturday night. The difference is that the traffic cops don't speak your language. Good luck.

The high-speed train from Rome to Naples was a treat, and a giveaway with long-advance, non-changeable tickets. The Circumvesuviana (local transit Naples-Sorrento) is crowded and messy, but it does the job. I will agree that Positano and Amalfi are "hard to get to" because the public busses are so crowded and require a change to go further than Positano. Some people prefer the ferry anyway, but we didn't use it. Alas, a rental car is not a big improvement, IMHO.

I don't doubt your ability to drive in Rome if you are used to Manhattan. Both are equally bad and if you don't drive inside Naples (which is truly bad) you will be ok.
The problem is time (or lack thereof). Most rental offices in the city open at 0830. Assuming you are there at opening time, by the time you are done with the paperwork, drive to Pompeii and park, you won't be at Pompeii before Noon. Visit three hours including a quick meal on the go, and you still can't be in Positano before 4 or 5, even later at Amalfi. The drive back to Rome is another 3.5 hours, so you need to keep the car overnight because the rental offices close earlier, unless you return at the airport.

Actually the high speed train is faster because the 0735 train can get you to Naples at 8:45 (impossible feat for a car, even if a Ferrari). At Naples, the Circumvesuviana commuter departing at 9:11 will get you to Pompeii at 0946. By 10:00am you are inside the excavation site.
There is a train every 30 min to Sorrento and the travel is 30 min.
In Sorrento you could get a bus to Positano or Amalfi. As long as you are back in Naples by 19:30 (or in Salerno by 19:36) you can make it back to Rome.

Eric

Please listen to the above suggestions. I grew up learning to drive in a 1963 Cadillac on the Brooklyn waterfront and dodging trucks and taxis in the Garment District in New York. ((off topic - is there still a garment district in New York?? I seem to remember it being around 7th Avenue in midtown, but it has been a coupla years)) I know what it is like to drive in a madhouse. And I drive in London regularly. Trust me - Naples is different. Driving in the whole Bay of Naples area is different. And slow. Incredibly slow. You think New Yorkers drive with cojones? Multiply it by 100 for Naples.

And, trust me, the train is so much easier and so much faster.

Now, if you could get a car from Sorrento to and from the Amalfi coast drive, in the off season that could be fun, and >>IF<< you could get parked in Positano you could have a couple of minutes there.

But really, I don't see how you can drive to the Amalfi Coast, and have time to visit Positano, and get back around the Bay and visit Pompeii, and get back to Rome in any kind of decent time and with any amount of energy.

(and I used to drive between Boston and New York at least once a month at one time)

Thank you everyone for the helpful replies. We are determined to try this out. Nigel, yes, the Garment district is still on 7th avenue in New York! Roberto, the rental car hours are an excellent point but to overcome this I am picking up that car the night before, parking it in a lot and heading out to Amalfi at 6am. To me, incurring the cost of an additional day of rental is worth the benefit of heading out early. We can be in Amalfi comfortably at 9:30. Even if we return back at midnight or 1:00 in Rome, Enterprise car rental said that we can drop off the car after hours (I spoke with a friendly gentleman last night from the office - just to ease my concerns about this process). I acknowledge that this is a lot to swallow in a day, but we prefer making the road trip and experiencing the AC and Pompeii, instead of just taking an easy going trip. This is the only day on our 10 day trip like this. And we have a few more days to recover before heading back to New York.

After researching this over the weekend, the tentative plan for the trip is as follows:
6:00 depart Rome
9:30 arrive in Amalfi
11:00 head to Positano
12:00 lunch in Positano
2:30 depart for Pompeii
6:00 depart for Naples
7:00 a quick pizza dinner in Naples
9:00 leave Naples
24:00 arrive back in Rome

That is the "targeted" plan. I tried to build in time at each stop (not ideal, but sufficient for our plan). If we're running late, returning the car late is not an issue since I can return it after hours with no issues.

Once again I appreciate and respect everyone's perspectives.

I don't know about dinner, but we stood outside Pizza Gino Sorbino for over a half-hour before our name was called for lunch seating. Remember what Rick sez: "Assume you'll return." We went to Pompeii on our fourth trip to Italy.

Have you taken into account the fact that you are not allowed to drive freely in parts of Naples without a special permit? The areas are called Zona a Traffico Limitato (ZTL) and fines for doing so are high. Here is a map showing the zones in Naples,

http://www.comune.napoli.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/1193

Rome (as do most cities and towns in Italy) also has ZTLs so make sure where you park the car overnight is not in one..

http://www.roninrome.com/%20transportation/ztls-in-rome

Well Eric, it's your trip, and we each have our own bucket lists and ways to enjoy. Personally, I find your day's schedule as lying somewhere in between ambitious and absurd, but that's just me. Good luck and I hope you'll get back to us after the fact and let it know how it all worked out in practice. It sounds like this may be your only driving during this trip and perhaps your first time driving in Italy. If so, I encourage you to do a little research on renting and driving in Italy. I will mention a few things that are often discussed on this forum: (1) each driver is required to have an International Drivers Permit along with their US (or other) drivers license. You can get those, and passport-type photos if you don't have them, quickly and inexpensively at a AAA office in the US. You may or may not be asked to show these when renting, but you will certainly if stopped by the police for any reason, generally having big problems or fines if the driver does not have one at that point; (2) many of us have advised getting full zero-deductible insurance on your rental; this not only protects you if you have any accident or damage to the car, it also protects you in case an auto rental staff finds some damage that you believe did not happen while you had the car, and full coverage removes any reason for staff to find such, even more important if you drop off the car when you and staff cannot look over the car together; often, credit card insurance coverage does not cover you in Italy, you should check if you are planning on that; (3) in addition to the ZTLs, you should be aware that on some roads there are cameras that can capture your license plate at intervals, and track your speed, for speeding tickets if your average speed is above the speed limits; in both cases, tickets can be very costly, can come to you up to a year later, along with rental company admin fees, and I understand they turn these over to collection agencies if not paid, although I have no personal experience with such fines, at least not yet. (4) parking can be expensive and sometimes not available at all; when I had a car for a few days in Sicily this past spring, I went through some towns planning to stop, but never did because I saw no available parking at all; parking certainly could be an issue especially in Positano, Amalfi and inside Naples. Apologies if you already knew all this. Best of luck! Enjoy, Larry

James, well done!!! I hope this stays as only a joke. And by the way, the one thing I worry about is the wife saying "I told you so; we should have taken the train!!"

I hope that leaving early, not speeding (this will be hard), being patient, and having some amount of luck will allow us to stay closer to my plan than yours.

Thanks again. ;-)

Please do come back and tell us how things went. As you can see, many others would not want to do this excursion (including me). But we're not you, and only you can say whether or not it was worthwhile, and then only once you've done it. So, please do leave feedback, as it will help others.

Eric, listen to James and the others. You could possibly ruin your whole trip, making the wife mad, etc., speeding tickets. Why don't you take the train and spend a night in Naples. Why would you post this question and ignore the advice of people who've tried to do this before?! If you're dying to rent a car somewhere, do it in Florence at the train station and drive around Tuscany -- thus avoiding the ZTLs and the tickets which you WILL pay?

Trust me, James isn't that far off.

Don't forget to look forward to those "admin" fees of something like €40 for each and every data reply to police for driving or parking violations, and then the fun of the three figure actual tickets months later. And you'll never see a policeman for those, it is all done by camera and computer.

All drivers really do need that IDP.

I'm afraid that James left out some other details. The random policeman conducting stops on the back roads or highway. If he (or she) holds out a baton with a circle at the end enclosing a red light you must stop and go through "the procedure".

Then there was the time I was driving through one of the infamous construction zones south of Napoli and hit a large rectangular piece of wood giving me a flat. There was nowhere to go to avoid it. Heavy truck to my right, another right on my bumper, heavy truck to my left and piles of trash on both sides, going around a steep narrow bend near Salerno. That put 3 hours into my day. I remember it like yesterday.

James is not kidding about the traffic on the Amalfi coast. I spend a good deal of my trips (3 or 4) with my wing mirrors pulled in, as do most folk, the lovely blue SITA buses are fun to follow, and then there was the time a coach was coming the other way and he couldn't back up for the corner. So after a bit we decided I would back up, and the cars behind me would back up, about 250 yards, around the corner and up the hill, then the coach came through, with us all very tight against the wall (he was on the sea side), and then one at a time we could go back forwards again. That took about 20 minutes as I remember. It may have been more. It may have been less.

Eric, I think that your asking for advice in your OP is actually asking for validation. I can't give any for your kamikazi driving idea. All my driving in the Bay of Naples area was when I was there for the best part of a week. To try to do all that from Rome is ... ambitious.

Please, please, please come back and tell us how it went.

Oh, I nearly forgot. Have you experienced the habit that major Italian highways, especially the A1, have of just coming to a halt for no obvious reason, creeping for 15 minutes and then going again?

Everyone, thanks for the warnings. I will need to refrain from speeding. I think if the U.S. had these automatic cameras for speeding, it would be a vastly different place. I can't imagine going down I-95 on the NJ turnpike at slower than 75 when the limit is 65. I respect everyone's perspectives. We get to Rome on 10/2 and IF we end up doing this I will certainly post the results.

This is my first experience buying the Rick Steves' books and coming to this site. The passion from all of you travelers is stimulating. What a great group.

I think it's doable, as long as it's not on a sunny weekend.

James forgot a detail in his itinerary while in Naples:
9pm: Get out of Pizzeria and walk to car to drive back to Rome
10pm: still looking for car
12am: at Carabinieri station filing a report for car theft. Welcome to Naples!

double applause for Roberto

You darn New Yorkers are all alike, you think nothing is impossible! Lol! Born and raised in Manhatten myself, my mother used to say that to my father and me all the time. I say go for it if you want and report back after your wife starts talking to you again. My first trip to Europe many years ago after much research and against any and all advice about driving in Paris way before GPS, I figured how hard could it be! My kids still remind me how many times we drove around the Arch trying to get off and back into traffic. Still glad we did it. Good luck!

I drive most everywhere and have driven the AC... And Naples....not a lot of fun...train there the next time. Never could find a place to park and stop for lunch in Sorrento...and that was in Feb....:):)
Nor could I enjoy the views as I was white knuckled most of the time. Have fun:))). Seriously, some do enjoy this drive with no problems....we all need to travel with 'no regrets'...so go for it!

Terry, I like your attitude (and share it). No regrets.

To all: I will certainly report back on this if we end up doing it. Thanks for all the comments. You're a great group of folks.

I can say from experience that trucks DO get stuck on the mountainside on the Amalfi Coast. Once I was driving it with my cousin, a truck driver, who had to jog ahead to reach the stuck vehicle and eventually got it detached from the mountain. Then people were mad at him because his 500-meter jog back to our car was holding up traffic.

Go for it anyway, Eric - it'll make a great story whether everything goes right or almost nothing does.

Roberto is dissing my people again.

Yikes! I was exhausted just by reading to 2:30 when you wanted to depart for Pompeii.

Seriously, this is a ba-a-a-a-d idea. Plan on returning and this could be at the top of that agenda.

Buon viaggio,

Ok - we did it! Here's the update:

Rented the car from Termini on Thursday night (10/2); picked it up at 6am on Friday and drove to Positano. Stopped for a cappuccino and cornetto on the way. Hit a bit of traffic getting into Positano. Walked down to the beach and had a quick lunch and gelato. It was beautiful. Continued to Amalfi, passing many beautiful spots along the way. The drive was invigorating. By the way, we rented a white, new Fiat 500, and it was a lot of fun driving it. You just have to go with the flow, keep up and let the cycles weave in and out as they please. The driving was fine. At Amalfi, parked at the lot down at the end of the pier. Walked through the beautiful town enjoying the amazing weather. Had a cone of calamari and shrimp while sitting on a bench enjoying the surroundings. Them off to Pompeii. We arrived at Pompeii at about 3:30 and did the Rick Steves audio tour for about 2 hours. It was an incredible place. By the time we were freshened up and ready to leave it was after 6pm. Needless to say we were tired, so instead of stopping for dinner in Naples, we drove back to Rome. We stopped for gas at an Autogrill stop (there were may of these along the way) and they had a very, very adequate place to eat. We had pasta freshly prepared (pasta heated in water then mixed with sauce in a pan). It was, of course, not like the many other great restaurant experiences we had had in Venice, Florence and Rome, but we were exhausted and hungry and just wanted to get home and it was a unique experience.

We then drove back to the parking lot where the car companies keep the cars and parked in a space and dropped our keys in the drop box. I almost drove into a ZTL street near Termini (at one point the GPS was correctly telling me to turn left - and it was a little confusing since on this one part of the street you turn left and drive a short while on the left side of the street and I didn't realize this was ok; we drove around the block and got to where we needed to be). We then waked 15 minutes to the St. Regis where we were staying. We got back to the hotel at about 10pm. We are very happy we made the decision to do this day trip. It was unlike all the city touring we had already experienced.

You need to enjoy driving and have the energy to do this. But if that is the case, you will have a great time. All the while, we felt that what we were doing was better than being in a Mercedes van with 6 other people taking essentially the same route. We had the flexibility and comfort that we wanted. I highly recommend this to those with the courage to try it.

I was a "Nay-sayer," and I'm here to say Congratulations, and I'm so glad it worked out. I'm still for spending at least 2 nights in the area!

So what did you do the day after this epic road trip?
I know I would have been road kill

We slept in, then did Galleria Borghese and a Colosseum tour with Art Viva the next day. We loved Rome.

Interesting that my U.S.-market Garmin does not have "ZTL/Congestion Charge" listed under the Options for "Avoidances". (I'm not saying it's an easy software option - I'm saying that innovative software entrepreneurs ought to be able to come up with something like this. It's a computer, after all!)

When we walked on the (main, downtown) pebble beach at Positano, I would not have used the word "beautiful." I suppose it has to do with life experiences, but I find a deserted, sand beach, like the Fire Island or Cape Cod National Seashore to be much more beautiful. The hillside of houses has considerable charm, but actually looks better from a road viewpoint 1/2 mile away.

But I thank eric for posting a report. It's of tremendous value to future travelers.

Wow. This just goes to show you we all have different ideas of what makes a wonderful trip. For me, it reinforces that I would never want to try this. I would feel so bad rushing by some gorgeous places that I would feel cheated. (Not to mention crabby and exhausted.)
Glad this worked for you. And thank you so much for posting back. Made for interesting reading.

The Travel Gods were smiling on you.

Truly.

Never try this again ;-)

Glad you enjoyed it!