08/19/2024
My trip today was to Pompeii and Vesuvius. I did this as an organised tour through a company called Sunland. It cost £123 which included entry tickets to both. A guided tour at Pompeii is €36 and entrance to visit Vesuvius is €10 so you are paying €77 for the transport and convenience of it all being organised, but I don’t think that is expensive as it is a 90 minute drive to get there. They picked us up from the centre of Amalfi bang on time and only did a couple of other stops to pick up other people. The coach was new, very well air-conditioned and the driver was excellent. We arrived at Pompeii and started the tour at about 10am. Our guide (who was with us throughout the day) was a very knowledgeable lady called Alessandra. She took us round Pompeii and gave us a lot of interesting information. Personally, I think you have to have a guide otherwise you wouldn’t know what you were looking at. Pompeii is incredible and absolutely worth visiting. Our tour lasted about two and a half hours which was longer than intended but it was extremely busy. I assume that was because it is peak season. I would recommend comfortable trainers for walking around it because the roads are mainly big cobbles. Everyone in our group was shattered by the end of the tour because you don’t really get the opportunity to sit down and it was very hot. I wouldn’t have missed any of it, though. After Pompeii we were taken on a 10-minute walk to a restaurant called ‘Tiberius’. It is very basic but for €18 they offer members of the tour a choice of pasta or pizza, lemon cake for dessert and a choice of drink (including wine or beer). There is no obligation to eat here but once you have walked there, you’ve missed the other food establishments so we all had lunch there. Quite frankly we needed to refuel and it was so cheap it would have been daft not to. (Tip: The pizzas looked better than the pasta.) After lunch we drove for about 40 mins to the car park at the bottom of Vesuvius. The path up to the top is pretty steep and it is very gravelly. It also takes half an hour in the hot sun. It is HARD work getting to the top, especially after the tour of Pompeii. I have to be honest (sorry if this upsets anyone) but I was a bit disappointed with it. I expected it to be wider and a lot deeper however you can see the bottom and it just looks like a big quarry. My expectations were probably due to my ignorance but, apart from being able to say I’ve done it, I’m not sure it was worth the effort. On the return journey we stopped off at a coral shop. This was also a toilet stop which was the most useful aspect of it. To sum up I would say that Pompeii was incredible and is a ‘must do’. Perhaps Herculaneum would have been a better option than Vesuvius? Sunland tours were top notch, though, and I would highly recommend them.
