We ( 2 adults and 2 teens) will be traveling to Italy in August and will be spending 5 nights in Sorrento. During that time we would like to do several day trips: 1. Amalfi Coast, 2. Capri 3:Pompeii/Herculaneum. Can anyone recommend a good tour company that does smaller/ and or private tours (we don't enjoy large group tours)? Are the Rick Steve's shared Mondtours a good option? Also, are any of these easy enough for us to do on our own without a guide given that this is our first time to Europe as a family?
Posted by
Happy Valley, PA
672 posts
The Mondo Shared Tour of the Amalfi Coast (Positano, Amalfi, and Ravello) is excellent and a terrific bargain. They drive you in a comfortable van and stop in each town, allowing you to explore for a few hours on your own. A meeting time is set by the driver to leave to go on to the next stop. We took the tour in late March 2017. I highly recommend it. They also have a tour to Capri from Sorrento, but we did that on our own, taking the hydrofoil from Sorrento. A good guidebook like RS Italy is all that you need to do Capri and Anacapri, as well as for self-guiding in Positano, Amalfi, and Ravello. As for Pompeii/Herculaneum, we visited that on our "get away day" on our way to Naples to catch a train to Florence. We used Sorrento Silver Star to take us from our hotel in Sorrento first to Pompeii, where they had arranged a 2-hour tour with a private guide, and then on to Herculaneum, which we explored on our own for about 1.5 hours before getting dropped off at Napoli Centrale station. Alternately, with the RS Italy Guidebook (and his apps) you can do both Pompeii and Herculaneum on your own. At Pompeii, they also give you a detailed booklet describing all of the houses and buildings on the site. But Pompeii is huge and I would recommend hiring a guide for ease of navigation and for their knowledge of the site. But many people do it on their own.
Posted by
lexington, il
4105 posts
With a little research, all of these are easily done by your family.
http://www.sorrentoinsider.com/#
For Pompeii and Herculaneum, take the Circumvesuvian and hire a guide at the gate.
For the Amalfi Coast, utilize the ferry and busses. I think you'll find the ferrys will be a faster mode of transportation, but look closely at their return schedules.
I'd take a ferry to Positano, then bus to Amalfi, then bus to Ravello. Visiting Amalfi after Ravello as this is where the return bus starts. The bus runs later than the ferry.
For Capri, ferry to the island and just wander.