Amalfi Coast, Sorrento & Pompeii Day Trip From Naples: My Honest Review

I only had four nights in Naples, and I still wanted to see Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast, so a single day tour was really my only option.

If you’re short on time in Naples like I was, this day trip is genuinely one of the best ways to see three major highlights without needing a car or a second base.

It ate up a full day of whatever time I had, which is worth factoring in if you’re mapping out 3 days in Naples like I did.

The tour I booked

I booked this Daily Tour: Pompeii, Sorrento & Positano through Viator.

What I paid: $107 USD for the full day.

Pickup was from the Uma hotel, an eight-minute walk from where I was actually staying (more on that in my where I’d stay in Naples guide), at around 8.15 to 8.30am, and we didn’t get back to Naples until just before 5pm, so plan for a genuinely full day.

If you want that same guided, no-guesswork approach but for the city itself rather than a day trip out, I did something similar with the Naples food tour with Eating Europe, and it was just as worth booking.

Amalfi Coast

We stopped a couple of times along the way for views over Meta and Positano in the distance, and our guide talked us through the history and geography of the coastline as we went.

We didn’t drive all the way into Positano itself on this particular tour, which I’ll be honest, I was a little disappointed about because I just simply didn’t have enough time to do the longer tour, but there’s a version of this same tour that goes further and includes it if you have a full day to spare and don’t mind a longer drive.

Sorrento

Sorrento was next, and we actually hit some bus problems getting into the town centre, which meant walking around 15 minutes from the local area into the tourist centre instead.

Honestly, I didn’t mind this at all, because it meant seeing a slightly more local side of the town before hitting the touristy main square with its cliffside views and souvenir shops.

We did a limoncello tasting here, trying four different kinds, including a strong one at roughly 35%, a milkier version around 16 to 17%, a pistachio one I wasn’t a fan of, and a melon version that was easily my favourite of the four, which earned it a spot on my list of 10 foods I tried in Naples and loved.

We also had lunch at a spot our guide recommended, and it’s one of the entries in my where to eat in Naples roundup, since it’s one of the better meals I had all week.

Pizza in Naples is its own rabbit hole though, one big enough that I gave it a dedicated 5 best pizzerias in Naples guide instead of trying to squeeze it in here.

Pompeii

Pompeii was the last stop, and it’s genuinely one of the best things you can do near Naples.

What I paid: €20 for entry through Viva Tickets, plus €15 for a guide, which I’d call essential rather than optional here.

The tickets are not included in this tour.

Pompeii covers 165 acres, and our guide explained that around 40 of those acres are still completely unexcavated to this day, which puts into perspective just how much of this city is still buried.

It was buried under volcanic ash and rock in 79 AD, then essentially forgotten until it was rediscovered by accident in 1748, when a local farmer digging for water found Roman artefacts instead.

We saw the amphitheatre, a wealthy resident’s house, preserved animal remains, and one of the plaster casts of a person caught in the eruption, frozen in the exact position they died.

One detail that stuck with me: no cat remains were ever found in the excavation, which suggests they may have sensed the danger and fled before the eruption properly hit.

If underground history is more your thing than open-air ruins, Pompeii isn’t the only buried angle Naples has, I also went beneath the streets for my Napoli Sotterranea review of the city’s underground tunnels.

Guided tours here typically run around two hours, though ours was shortened slightly because of the heat.

If you’d rather do Pompeii on its own without the full coastal loop, I’ve also covered it separately in my 13 things to do in Naples guide.

Would I book this again?

Genuinely yes, and I’d happily do it again if I were back in Naples with limited time, which says something given how I feel about whether Naples is worth visiting overall.

Our guide Ani, originally from India but trained in Italian cooking, knew an enormous amount about both Italian and Neapolitan history, and our driver got us there and back safely despite some genuinely hair-raising Naples traffic (if the city itself has you nervous, I’ve written honestly about whether Naples is safe based on my own four days there).

If you have more time and want to go off-season, when the roads are quieter and the tour isn’t rushing to beat cruise ship crowds, I’d actually recommend waiting for that instead of squeezing this into peak summer like I did.

For more on when to visit generally, my best time to visit Naples guide goes into this in more detail.