22 Oct 2023
Pompeii was one of my most anticipated and favorite parts of our whole trip, but a lot of things about their tour could have been streamlined. We wasted hours of he day, with very minimal time off the bus, because of how the day was scheduled and sharing a duel-language guide.
Pros: comfortable bus, sufficient stops for bathroom/coffee, the Pompeii tour itself was amazing.
Cons: half our group was going to Capri, so we had to sit in very heavy Naples traffic to drop them off. The “panoramic tour of Naples” was essentially learning a bit here and there while sitting in the same traffic. It added very little of interest to the day. And after Pompeii, was had to sit in this same traffic again to pick them up.
After Naples, we stopped at a coral/cameo factory. Although it was cool to see how it was done, it was all extremely expensive, unexpected, and felt very tourist-trappy. Again, wasted time I would’ve spent elsewhere. I didn’t book a Pompeii trip to buy cameos, and yet I had much more opportunity to do this than spend time around Pompeii.
Communication and setting expectations in general could be much better- our guide didn’t tell us we were having a long multi-course lunch, didn’t tell the tour group where to meet the bus at multiple stops.
Throughout the day, there were two languages needed for our tour group. This was fine on the bus- however in Pompeii, it meant our guide had to say everything twice before moving on. I can only imagine how much more we may have seen (Pompeii is HUGE) if we didn’t spend twice as much time on explanations as other groups. Our guide was great otherwise!