My wife and I will be in Rome in May and would like to travel down the Amalfi Coast. We are planning a full day in Pompeii and are considering then maybe a 2 or 3 days with Amalfi as our base. Can you suggest a good itinerary, best way to get there and places to stay?
You probably would have better responses if you planned a little more and then asked specific questions. Do your homework first.
Raymond,
Rick Steves does a fantastic job covering all of this in his book. He goes over all of the transportation options, and has good reccomendations for hotels. We also used our Lonely Planet guidebook to plan our trip.
For us, Sorrento made a fantastic base. It was much more central, and offered many more transportation, dining, and lodging options. We took the Circimvesuviana train to Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Naples.
The bus from the Naples airport was cheap easy, and clean and convenient. You can train or fly to Naples from Rome, then you must change to the Circimvesuviana train, the bus, or the ferries, to get to Sorrento.
We also took the bus tour to Amalfi and the other towns.
Make sure that you plan to spend some time in the Museum in Naples. Eveerything that was plundered from Pompeii was displayed there.
Steve makes many good points. We did pretty much the same and enjoyed ourselves. From Sorrento you can also take boats along the coast to Positano et.al. or to Capri, making for lots of options. In Sorrento we stayed at the Mignon Mueble and it was quite nice. Centrally located right off the Corso and easy walk to restuarants, molto gelato, shops,trains, piers. No sea vistas as some prefer but a nice little place, convenient and reasonable.
Here's the link to our summer Amalfi area itinerary on my travel blog (you'll find the itinerary we used last summer including sites, hotels, restaurants, etc). Just copy and paste; hope it helps!
http://moltogentileitalia.blogspot.com/2008/09/itinerary-13-night-summer-trip-to-italy.html