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Taking a DIY approach to visiting Pompeii

As a frequent traveller and tourist, I’m not always a fan of organized tours. I know that they’re a popular way for people to see certain places without doing the research about those places themselves.

With the right guide, these tours can be incredibly informative. I learned a lot from my walking tours in Barcelona and in the Gulf of Poets (my tour from La Spezia that visited Lerici and Portovenere in Italy). But group tours can also be restrictive, making you follow a certain path at a set pace. If the guide isn’t good enough to balance this out, the tour can feel like a bit of a waste.

For my Mediterranean cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas, I decided to buy excursions for three of our four ports — a high number for this traveller who mostly likes to strike out on her own. For my third of the three, I decided to take an approach that was a little more “me.”

I knew I wanted to visit Pompeii, since I hadn’t made it there on my previous port stop in Naples. Rather than purchase a full guided tour, I bought a “Pompeii On Your Own Transfer” through Royal Caribbean and purchased my ticket into the site directly from TicketOne, the Italian ticket seller for the Pompeii site.

It would have been fairly simple for me to do some basic research about ways to get to Pompeii such as the train or the public bus. But I knew that these options would likely involve walking into the city center from the port, and given that this was my third of three port stops in a row, I figured that I really wouldn’t want to bother with that. (I was right.)

The tour bus to Pompeii made it so easy to reach the site, and buying my ticket ahead of time meant that I got to skip the first line to purchase tickets and get directly in the line to visit the site. Being on my own, rather than with a tour group, allowed me to see the site at my leisure, taking breaks to sit in the shade when I needed to.

I know that I didn’t learn quite as much about the history of Pompeii without a (good) tour guide, and there’s maybe some sites I missed. But still, I had a great day exploring the site at my own pace, and the bus was waiting to take us directly back to the ship once our time at the site was up. I definitely recommend this option if you’re more of a DIY person when it comes to your travel exploration.