Pompeii and Herculaneum group tour from Amalfi Coast

It was difficult to find a tour with transportation from Praiano, so I am impressed by that. We rode on a standard bus and had to split up into vans/cars on the way there/back. Our guide was not very knowledgeable, outside of the more crude details of Pompeii and Herculaneum. He pointed out several of the fallic symbols, which is all good and fun, but did not tell us much else on our tour.

I brought some clients to this tour having completed it several times myself previously and being impressed by it. They all enjoyed it - came home exhausted but happy. Very tiring, particularly when hot but worth the time and effort. Lunch was quickly provided in a short break between the two sites. The only hiccup was the delay in getting people home on the shuttle services at the end.

The tour is worthy of he cost, the guide is very professional. The sites are impressive. The day we went was a bit too hot to walk a long time, so if you are not good at walking, this might be a bit difficult.

This could have been a great tour...but failed on many fronts. Good stuff - great places to visit, and being off season both crowds and temperature were manageable. The guide did know his stuff, and transportation was comfortable. Transportation Issues 1. They don't communicate in advance when you'll be picked up. What we learned shortly before tour was that our pick up time was 7:15 am, as we were the first to be picked up on a small bus in Positano, that then went to other towns for other pickups that then fed us to a larger bus, that then make additional pick-up stops. Their Amalfi, Positano, Praiano....or Minori tour title should say and not or as they aggregate pick-ups from all of these towns. Yikes! 2. Tickets ARE NOT INCLUDED. While this may be in the fine print, most of the folks on our tour including us did not know this. Why in the world can't the tour operator include this in the price? Upon arriving at the crowed sites i.e., Pompeii, we're not only told we need to cough up the money, but if we only have credit cards, are sent off to the long general public ticket lines to buy our personal tickets. Yikes again! don't go away...it gets worse...see below The Guide - Of all our travel - and we travel extensively - worst we ever had. Why? 1. No People Skills - upon getting back to the group after buying tickets per above, and been told we'd have time to eat quickly again, see pick-up time above. Instead, the moment I got back and about the take a bite of the food my wife picked up while I was on the long line, he announced ok, is everyone ready? When I share that I needed a minute - for obvious reasons - he announced to the group I cannot inconvenience the group for one person! felt like a scolded child. To make matters worse, after throwing out the food we had just purchased, he walked us to a new point literally 90 seconds away and said now wait here while I buy the tickets for those who gave me cash Yikes yet again!! 2. He didn't have people skills - when some folks on the tour didn't understand how the molds of the bodies were captured - he was using phrases like empty space that he assumed they'd understand - he gave a sigh and literally said I will make believe you are very young school children and try it again that way. The looks on the faces of his supposed customers said it all... 3. For the lunch break, when we were about to put us back on the bus to drive to Herculaneum, he could have driven us many places for lunch. Instead he marched us to a local restaurant, with high cost low quality food, where he obvious got a kick-back given how they welcomed him...and learned after eating that they DIDNT TAKE CREDIT CARDS. Didn't he know that many of his guest needed to pay that way given the ticket purchasing mayhem earlier that day? We've had many exceptional tours via Viator i.e.., Colosseum Tour was one of the best we've had anyplace in the world, but this was the opposite extreme. You're MUCH better off getting local/private transportation to the sites and hiring a private guide right there. Large waste of our valuable vacation time/money that could have been better spent with a different vendor

This was an excellent trip and a great way to see these sites. Pompeii is a very large site and would be difficult to negotiate under your own steam. With the guide we were confident we had seen the important parts of the site and his information and explanations were very informative. The guide was extremely knowledgeable and clearly very enthusiastic about archeology and history, as well as being very pleasant and helpful. The tour was also well organised with pick up, transportation between sites and drop off going like clockwork. I would highly recommend this tour.