Going to Pompeii was one of my most anticipated stops on the trip. I had learned so much about this city and was very excited to visit it in person!
We decided to do this trip through Can’t Be Missed Tours. My mom had read about it in Rick Steves’ Mediterranean Cruise Ports. The company does give you a discount if you say that you heard about them through Rick Steves. I highly recommend their tour!
This day started off with the ship docking on land. I love when the ship docks on land, it makes things so much quicker. We made our way through the cruise port terminal and out the main entrance where we meet up with our tour guides. There was a group of about 30 of us from the Disney cruise going with this tour group.
They had two small bus / vans and two tour guides for our trip. It worked out perfect when they gave our family a bus of our own (we had 12 people in our group).
This was a full day tour. They got us back just in time to get back to the ship before it left port. The first part of the day we spent riding up the Amalfi Coast while our tour guide gave us a tons of history about the area and taught us a little bit of Italian. He was a very personable, fun guy.
We took a couple of stops along the way for pictures. With a longer stop in Sorrento for lunch and chance to stretch our legs. It was a nice little town and a very pretty day to walk around.
The place they highly encouraged for lunch was just so-so. It was quick which was nice but the food was just okay. I think I would have preferred grapping something at a street stand or a deli.
We did make our way over to an amazing outlook over the water. I think my husband feel in love with this place after seeing the crystal clear water people were swimming in. This place is at the top of his list to revisit so he can take a swim.
After our time was up in this town we meet the tour guide back at the bus. After another bus ride and some more fun facts we arrived at Pompeii. We met up with the other bus and tour guide for this portion of the tour. They gave us all the audio guide earphones so we could hear our tour guide without them having to scream. We then headed to the gate and entered this world frozen in the past.
It was amazing how well preserved the whole city was and how much was just open to walk through. It was huge! I mean, I knew it was a whole city, but it is hard to imagine the scale. You could walk through a huge palace size structure, through a courtyard, through rooms at the far size of the court yard and then end up in an endless ally way with doors on both sides. I could have spent days exploring this city and still not see everything.
I would love to go back and take another guide tour of this place just to learn more about another area. I would also like to spend some time exploring by myself. That is the one thing we didn’t have time for. The whole time we were with the tour group. I guess that was a good thing, we didn’t have a chance to get lost and miss the ship.
One thing I would recommend before going to visit Pompeii would be to watch a documentary about it. I actually watched “Pompeii: The Last Day” on Netflix after we returned and really wished I had watched it before as a refresher about the city.
After our tour was over we headed back to the buses and back to the ship. Before boarding the ship we ran into a couple of carters all dressed up for pirate night! I was so excited for my first pirate night with fireworks! My first cruise it rained and my second they were not allowed in Alaska because of noise laws.
Where did all the Rum go?
Just a warning, if you have second dinner service you might have to skip dessert to make it to the show. But they have dessert at the pirate buffet to make up for it. Oh and turkey legs! Arrr.
