Naples Advice

[txgirl74]

Hello,

 

We are going to be porting in Naples on Celebrity Reflection in October of this year.

 

We have never been to Naples, so I am looking for suggestions. Private tour vs DIY? (i don't want do a ship excursion)

 

I definintely want to see Pompeii and I have heard Capri is beautiful.

 

Thoughts?;)

[Hlitner]

Do a search on this blog and you will find hundreds of posts about Naples and its many options. You could go to Naples a dozen times and never do the same thing (or go the same places) twice. Since the various options are really a matter of personal taste and priorities you need to read about the region, look at all the various tour options offered by your cruise line (although we do not like cruise line excursions they do give you a great idea of the options), etc. Just as a simple example from Naples you have Naples, Capri, Sorrento, Ishcia, Procida, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Heruclanium, Amalfi Coast Drive, Positano, Ravello, Amalfi, Salerno, Paestum, and there is more. Some of these options would take nearly an entire port day and others can be combined in a single day.

 

Hank

Edited February 7, 2014 by Hlitner

[thestokes]

You can definitely see Pompeii and the Amalfi coast in one day. Rome In Limo is a very good tour company. Enjoy!

[kadey]

Last April we did Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast to Sorrento and Positano(time was allotted for lunch here.). We had a fantastic day using Joe Banana tour Company who provided us with Sasha as our tour guide.He really made this excursion into something very special because of his love of doing his job. His father was a tour guide and he grew up watching his father do these tours. He knew Pompeii like the back of his hand and even knew where to find a fossil of a leaf on a wall as we exited! It was a perfect day!

[1kaper]

The Amalfi coast was my absolute favorite part of my mediterranean cruise. I will go back.

We did a tour with Can't Be Missed tours that took on the Amalfi drive with a stop in Sorrento and turned around in Positano. We stopped for a tour of Pompeii on the way back.

 

I was extremely happy with the tour and guide, although it is a group tour.

[3ssn]

If you don't need a guide, you can just get a taxi to drive you around. They have fixed prices to be paid after you return to the port. For example eur 90 to/from Pompeii including a 2 hour wait

[ShannonSC2]

The Amalfi coast was my absolute favorite part of my mediterranean cruise. I will go back.

We did a tour with Can't Be Missed tours that took on the Amalfi drive with a stop in Sorrento and turned around in Positano. We stopped for a tour of Pompeii on the way back.

 

I was extremely happy with the tour and guide, although it is a group tour.

 

I have heard so much about the Amalfi Coast. I think this is where I want to go when we are there in June. Is Pompeii another place that we should put on our list of places to visit? Is there anything in Napels that we need to see?

 

TIA!

[bajacali]

The Amalfi coast was my absolute favorite part of my mediterranean cruise. I will go back.

We did a tour with Can't Be Missed tours that took on the Amalfi drive with a stop in Sorrento and turned around in Positano. We stopped for a tour of Pompeii on the way back.

 

I was extremely happy with the tour and guide, although it is a group tour.

Can you tell me what type of vehicle was used for your Pompeii/Amalfi coach tour - van, bus, car? Was it air conditioned? Thanks

[Tommy3putts]

Spent 7 days on the Amalfi coast this last August. It quickly became one of my favorite spots in all of Italy. I can't wait to go back again.

[1kaper]

I have heard so much about the Amalfi Coast. I think this is where I want to go when we are there in June. Is Pompeii another place that we should put on our list of places to visit? Is there anything in Napels that we need to see?

 

TIA!

 

It depends. Pompeii is a historical site. If that interests you, then yes. I remember reading about it as a child so it was pretty near to visit.

 

 

Can you tell me what type of vehicle was used for your Pompeii/Amalfi coach tour - van, bus, car? Was it air conditioned? Thanks

 

It was an air conditioned bus. There was a driver and a guide. He was funny an informative.

[thestokes]

On our first visit to Naples we took a Rome in Limo van to Pompeii with a cruise critic group of about 6. Then we drove up the Amalfi Coast and had lunch in Positano. From there we went to Sorrento for shopping and took the ferry back to the cruise dock. We saw it all and never felt rushed. On our second visit, we stayed in Naples and did a Vespa tour of the city with Napolin Vespa. It was great and we felt like real Neapolitans!

[Hlitner]

Spent 7 days on the Amalfi coast this last August. It quickly became one of my favorite spots in all of Italy. I can't wait to go back again.

 

Agree! A few years ago we first visited this region on a cruise and then returned, during a lengthy driving trip, to spend a week on the Amalfi Coast (in Praiano). We loved it so much that a few years later we returned for another week (and still loved the region). If we live long enough we hope to again return to this region. Cruises are a great way to get a taste of many areas, but you cannot beat a land trip for really having the time to enjoy a region.

 

Hank

[cleobella]

We joined a group on our roll call and hired Rome in Limo for the day to take us to Pompeii, and take us through part of the Amalfi Coast. We stopped in Sorrento and Positano and had a great day. Our tour guide got us ahead of the crowd and through the gates at Pompeii before the rest of the tourists so for a while it was like we had the place to ourselves! On the way back to the ship our guide played all the old Italian songs from the '50s (Lazy Mary, That's Amore) and bought us some grapes to snack on!

[texancruzer]

Do yourself a favor and check out APTours.

 

http://www.aptours.it

 

They will provide a wonderful tour (you customize) and do it for less than the other tour companies.

 

We have used them EVERY time we have been (thats 4 times) and have not been disappointed !!!!

 

Pompeii is not to be missed if this is your first visit to the area....... but you can do that and the Amalfi coast area in one day..... one of our favorite places of all !!!!

[txgirl74]

Do yourself a favor and check out APTours.

 

http://www.aptours.it

 

They will provide a wonderful tour (you customize) and do it for less than the other tour companies.

 

We have used them EVERY time we have been (thats 4 times) and have not been disappointed !!!!

 

Pompeii is not to be missed if this is your first visit to the area....... but you can do that and the Amalfi coast area in one day..... one of our favorite places of all !!!!

 

Thanks!! We actually found a company called Amalfi Coast Private Day Tours at a reasonable rate. Still thinking of a DIY. Just not sure how difficult that is.

[OldBoot]

You can definitely see Pompeii and the Amalfi coast in one day. Rome In Limo is a very good tour company. Enjoy!

 

Hoping to use this tour company for more than just our tour of Rome. When you took this tour with them, did they also guide you inside Pompeii or did you hire a separate guide for this?

 

Sent from my HTC One X+ using Forums mobile app

[CathyCruises]

Thanks!! We actually found a company called Amalfi Coast Private Day Tours at a reasonable rate. Still thinking of a DIY. Just not sure how difficult that is.

 

Easy to do DIY alone to Pompeii, Herculaneum, Sorrento. Much more difficult to do the Amalfi Coast, which is extremely winding and narrow. The only way to DIY that part would be by rental car, and the person driving would see nothing much at all.

 

We have done both, a shared tour of Amalfi Coast and Pompeii on one visit, and taken the train to Herculaneum and Sorrento, ferrying back, on another visit. Both were great, one was a lot more expensive!

[travelling1964]

Hello,

 

We are going to be porting in Naples on Celebrity Reflection in October of this year.

 

We have never been to Naples, so I am looking for suggestions. Private tour vs DIY? (i don't want do a ship excursion)

 

I definintely want to see Pompeii and I have heard Capri is beautiful.

 

Thoughts?;)

 

Hello .......... Last year we did a similar cruise in the Mediterranean, where many Italian ports were included, and one of the ports of call was Naples where we had a private tour on the Coast with a stop in Pompeii for about 8/9 hours with English speaking driver and Mercedes minivan. Was a great experience but most of all we visited places where a bus could not stop over. The price was generally lower than those proposed on board and the result was excellent.

That 's the e-mail address and the website of the company:

 

http://www.lovelyamalfitours.com info@lovelyamalfitours.com

 

I hope to be of help

[cruisemom42]

Thanks!! We actually found a company called Amalfi Coast Private Day Tours at a reasonable rate. Still thinking of a DIY. Just not sure how difficult that is.

 

If you want to see both Pompeii and Capri in a day, it's possible but it will be a push. Private tours aren't a lot of help with Capri as it's really just a matter of getting the hydrofoil there and back. Personally, I'm a bigger fan of not trying to combine these two major sites in a single day, but it is often done....

 

Luckily in October it should be a little less hot and crowded than the peak season.

 

I would recommend getting the earliest start you can to the day. You can take the Circumvesuviana train, or perhaps easier, the bus that departs from near the port and goes to Pompeii. (I haven't done the bus but info posted here makes me think it would be a very good choice.)

 

You'd have to limit yourself to probably 2 hours at most in Pompeii. You can pick up a guided tour at the gate for about that length of time. Guides get small groups together and will charge you around 10 euro per person (assuming a group of about 10-12 people). Or you can pick up the information at the main entrance desk that suggests what to see if you have about 2 hours. Rick Steves has a free podcast with tour that again is about 2 hours if you go straight through it. I'd also recommend some research in advance as to what you most want to see -- the site is huge. I spent two entire days there about two years ago and still only saw a fraction of it.

 

Return to the port (again, either by train or bus) and then take the hydrofoil to Capri. The hydrofoils leave from the area just beside the cruise port. Be aware that even the fast ferries take about 50-60 minutes to get to Capri -- so a roundtrip will eat 2 hours out of your day. You can check timing here: http://www.capri.net/en/ferry-schedule?path_id=11 (Schedules can change seasonally.)

[euro cruiser]

One small change to cruisemom's layout - rather than return back north to Naples in order to take a boat south to Capri, take the Circumvesuviana south to Sorrento and get a boat out to Capri from there.

 

I would recommend the bus over the train from Naples to Pompei. Takes about the same amount of time but it's far more comfortable and the bus depot is much closer to the cruise port than the Circumvesuviana station.

[cruisemom42]

One small change to cruisemom's layout - rather than return back north to Naples in order to take a boat south to Capri, take the Circumvesuviana south to Sorrento and get a boat out to Capri from there.

 

I would recommend the bus over the train from Naples to Pompei. Takes about the same amount of time but it's far more comfortable and the bus depot is much closer to the cruise port than the Circumvesuviana station.

 

Brilliant, why didn't I think of that?

 

At Pompeii, you're about halfway between Naples and Sorrento, but Sorrento is closer to Capri, so it's a shorter ride (about 30 minutes) on the ferry/hydrofoil.

[CathyCruises]

The only problem is, it was a really slow train to Sorrento. Took one hour + from Herculaneum, which is only a few stops before Pompeii. So you'd need to study the train schedule to see if it would work. I know there's an express but I don't know if it stops at Pompeii. From Herculaneum, it was 24 stops to Sorrento!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

[cruisemom42]

The only problem is, it was a really slow train to Sorrento. Took one hour + from Herculaneum, which is only a few stops before Pompeii. So you'd need to study the train schedule to see if it would work. I know there's an express but I don't know if it stops at Pompeii. From Herculaneum, it was 24 stops to Sorrento!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

 

The express trains stop at both Pompeii and Herculaneum. On the downside, they aren't very frequent.

[euro cruiser]

If the trains are running on time, and they're usually not too far off, it should take just about 30 minutes from Pompei Scavi to Sorrento and about 45 minutes from Ercolano to Sorrento.

[txgirl74]

Thank you all for the information!! It is very helpful!