Pompeii & Herculaneum Guided Tour from Rome

What an amazing experience visiting the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Our tour guide is an archeologist and had lots of knowledge and was a true historian of the events that occurred in Herculaneum and Pompeii. If you have trouble walking on uneven ground or up steps, this is not the tour for you. Lots and lots of uneven roads and sidewalks take you around the cities, The lunch spot at the mall was great, but an hour to walk to the mall, use the restroom, and eat made us feel very rushed. The tour company books your trains-we were disappointed we were not sitting together on the first train and our return train was an almost 2 hour wait before it would leave to take us back to Rome. We ended up going to the Italo office and rebooking our tickets for a train that left in 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the change cost each of us $22, for a total of $88. Overall, a long but vey interesting day!!

The tour was informative and educational about these historic sites. The guide was passionate about the history of the sites. Her background information was insightful and helped to understand the ancient society. Only letdown was the lunch stop, I would have enjoyed some local cuisine, but we were taken to a local mall with a food court, not very exciting food options.

There is so much history being taught by Michele that you really need to pay attention. Very informative. His knowledge together with the ruins made for a great day. If you are not used to hot weather, come prepared and stay hydrated.

Executive Summary: We did not receive our train tickets and went to great expense to join the tour at the halfway point because a customer service agent was not able to communicate in English. We did not receive the train tickets to get to the tour. We were sent QR codes for the tour via email (that we thought would be for the train but were not). We had to buy our own tickets (122 euro) to get to Naples and then a local train to Pompeii. Then we had to walk a mile in the heat to join our tour in progress. This was all due to a miscommunication by the tour operator. They called the day before to confirm that we received the train tickets, but they did not speak English very well. We understood that there was a time change for the train, but they could not tell us what train or what our seats were (we asked the agent 4 times and did not get an answer). The "get your giude" email said that the tickets would be sent by email or "whats app", while the tour operator said they had sent the tickets through the "get your guide" messaging feature (they did NOT). This operator seems to have plenty of communication issues. It was all a big mess with no admission off fault by the tour operator. This all could have been avoided if the customer service representative could communicate in English. The 1/2 of the tour we attended was fine.

Excellent day well organised but watch out that your reading your train instructions correctly keep your eye on the train information boards the number they give you is a coach number and not platform number. Very interesting and informative and the day flowed. Would have liked the guide to slow down a bit.