Rome May 24 - The Tour Guide Eva was brilliant. Only negative was the absence of a toilet facility at the starting point!!

Walking in history - What an amazing step back in history, could spend days and days and still be surprised. If doing on the audio tour, follow the map with the numbers and listen to the numbers descriptions. And enter the main doors of the exhibit, otherwise difficult to follow, but informative.

Bumpy - Very enjoyable and learned a lot. We needed more time to see where the horses are buried. Guide was wonderful. Showed recent things uncovered from a picture.

Self Guided - This was great, but you do need to pick up your tickets from another spot before entering Pompeii. Other than that they give you your audio and move at your own pace.

Good Guide experiemce - If you aren’t going to hire a private tour guide, this is the next best option. Allows you to pick and choose the parts of Pompeii you want to see/learn about

Touristville with little else to offer but wonderful history - So complicated to redeem tickets! Arrived in Pompeii 3.5 hours ahead of scheduled entrance due to poor transport links to previous booking that we were unable to fulfill, please ensure that you don’t book Herculaneum and Pompeii from Naples on the same day it doesn’t work. So we had hours to spare, outside the entrances to the ruins is tourist heaven/hell, if you don’t mind vendors pouncing on you for the merest glance in their direction and cigarette smoke this is the place for you! Not for us the cafe we stopped at for a coffee, one decaf americano and a normal American o with milk arrived as both black and the waiter was gone before we could ask for milk! A wander around past the tourist zone revealed a barren landscape of shuttered housing and shops, almost like a ghost town. Back to touristville for food , the salads we ordered were slammed down on the table and watch out for bread in a bag( they charge for yesterday’s leftovers) and the use of the toilets, highly unimpressed! Back to the station to redeem the online purchase of an audio tour, if you like a laid back American telling you what’s what then you’ll be in heaven, we couldn’t cope with it so switched it off and wandered to heart’s content! Take a hat! There is no shade!!! The site is huge , uphill entrance nearly turned my wife off the whole thing( knee and lady problems) the site is not level, the paving is polished by ten thousand feet a day and slippery, be prepared unless your on a guided tour you will be cut up , trampled and looked at as dog excretion by the guides if you dare get in the way of their pontifications. To do justice to the site and the history you really need 2 days and a personal guide, getting out was a trial of endurance, follow the signs , it’s the only way, be prepared for more money rinsing, finally escaped to the station for the train back to Naples, on arriving in Naples station( train dirty and overcrowded) found we had been pickpocketed! €400 gone ! So if you want to go to Pompeii be careful to arrive just in time for your assigned slot, wear a hat, keep hold of your valuables or someone else will!

Audio Guide too much screen time to access audio guide during tour. - For the audio guide, they handed you one of their phones and every section had to be accessed by going to the next screen. There was too much screen time and trying to figure out where to go to understand the guide. Not recommended.

Pompeii tour - Disappointing - we booked the skip the line audio tour for two adults and a child. When picking up the tickets at the shop we were given only the two skip the line tickets for adults but were sent to stand in the long line at the entrance to obtain the “free” ticket for the child. Made absolutely no sense. If it wasn’t for the kindest people working at the entrance the whole “skip the line” experience which come with the higher price would have been in vain.

Don’t get this tour. - This ticket was a waste of money. First of all, the staff was extremely unfriendly. We were not treated well at all. The audiotour was not helpful - the numbers on the map we got did not correspond to the numbers on the buildings or the official Pompeii map, so it was very difficult to locate the buildings. In addition, we were not informed that the ticket did NOT include the Villa of Mysteries, the main reason we went to Pompeii. We found out too late that an additional ticket was needed, and by then it was too late because it closed at 5pm. The staff should have informed us of this, but, as I mentioned, the staff was not interested in our well being at all. Viator should drop this tour company, or at least let them know how unfriendly they are.

Learn from my mistake - It took longer to get the ‘skip the line’ ticket than if I had gone and purchased it on the day. And it was so much more expensive! The same goes for all skip the lines without a tour guide. Avoid this mistake. Only use this service if you are booking a proper tour with a guide.