Tour from sorrento to Pompeii

The Circumvesuviana train is quick, easy, and inexpensive. The Sorrento station is easy walking from the main part of town, and there's a stop at Pompeii for the ruins. Be careful which stop you get off at; the stop for Pompeii town is not convenient for the ruins. One other caveat: when we bought our tickets at Sorrento last year, the clerk didn't give me change for our tickets, even though I spoke to him in Italian when I ordered them. I'm assuming this was an isolated incident, but our train was ready to leave, and I didn't have time to follow up on it. So don't wait until the last minute (which is what we did) to get your tickets.

Pompeii Scavi is the stop you need on the Circumvesuviana to actually get to the ruins.

Ditto to the above: the Circumvesuviana train is what you want. It's cheap, and thousands of tourists take it to Pompei every year. It's a beat-up, bare-bones commuter - keep a tight rein on your valuables - but does the trick. Buy round-trip tickets in Sorrento, and do NOT forget to validate them before getting on the train!

When you get to Pompei I highly recommend taking a few minutes to browse the bookshop at the entrance and purchasing a good guidebook with a map and lots of pictures. It'll help you to know where you are (it's a HUGE site) and what you're looking at. Makes a nice souvenir when you get home too: I've hauled ours out for reference many times since we've last been there.

And yes, you want to get off at Pompei Scavi-Villa dei Misteri station on not Pompei...which is the town and not the ruins.

Schedule for the Circumvesuviana (both directions)
http://www.eavsrl.it/web/sites/default/files/eavferro/Sorrento%20-%20Napoli.pdf
http://www.eavsrl.it/web/sites/default/files/eavferro/Napoli%20-%20Sorrento.pdf

The Circumvesuviana Campania Express train is even better; recommend if at all possible even if it's a couple euros more.

http://www.eavsrl.it/web/sites/default/files/eavferro/CAMPANIA%20EXPRESS%202016.pdf
"A" means arrival, and "P" means departure ( arrivi and partenze, in Italian)

http://www.napoliunplugged.com/campania-express-tourist-train-to-herculaneum-pompeii-and-sorrento

My most recent post seems to have disappeared; I think I lost the connection as it was processing. So here we go again:

Thanks, Tim. I thought the right station was Scavi, but I didn't have my notes with me when I posted the first time. May I also suggest Herculaneum - Ercolano in Italian. It's on the same train line, easy to get to, and is smaller than Pompeii. It's a little easier to navigate, for that reason. However, I would strongly urge people to not try to do Pompeii and Ercolano on the same day. It could be too much even for history and archeology geeks. (Like us.)