Explosive Naples Shore Excursion: Pompeii, Herculaneum and Vesuvius

First off this isn't a tour its transportation. Transportation with flexibility to go and do as you please. You are renting the car and driver for the day. In case anyone thought it might be a guided tour of some kind. We were taken to all 3 sites and picked up when we requested. The driver was friendly and helpful. He mentioned a few things here and there but maybe if we asked more questions he would have provided more information. Hitting all 3 places is a lot though. If you are the kind that wants to see every nook and such you won't have enough time. Pompei is big. We probably should of opted to pay for a guide there to at least rush us through all of the important sites. The audio guide and maps didn't do any justice with the time we had. With our family we ended up spending over 3hrs there and I think we might of seen half of the place. If it wasn't so hot we probably could of spent half the day exploring this place. Herculaneum is smaller and I think we spend 2 hours there and that was mostly about right. We didn't see everything but felt like most of it. Again, if you really want to know what you are looking at a guide is probably key. Vesuvius was a great topper to the trip. Most of us managed to make it up to the top. To be fair we overran our tour by over 2 hours and the driver let us slide. Partly because there was a mixup with child boosters ( that we paid in advance for) that were not there for the first part of out trip so they let us go longer. And the rest of the time was from the kindness of the driver. I think overall they went out of their way to be helpful. It wasn't cheap by any means for 5 of us but we were able to see the 3 things we wanted to. For the limited time we had I'm good with what we got. I'd might go back to Pompeii for an extended visit with a guide for myself. Kids saw more than enough. The car seat or lack of car seats we paid for was annoying but the driver went and got them after dropping us off at the first stop and they allowed the tour to go longer for our inconvenience. I'm not sure if you need them if there is a better way to get them to make sure they are there. My only other odd comment is they don't actually book the advance skip the line tickets until you show up at the sites. Which more or less was fine. You will need to have data for your phone though, as they come via PDF sent to the driver who then passed them to us. If you were traveling and didn't have roaming data on your phone, I'm not sure how you get the tickets.

We were able to see all 3 sites in one day. If you are a history buff you may not want to do this . For us it was great.