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A Week in Italy: Rome, Sorrento, and Pompeii

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The Colosseum

My first trip to Italy was in 2019 with my daughter, sister-in-law, and nieces as part of a school tour via Explorica. Italy was my favorite part of our three country tour (England, France, Italy) despite being the hottest and muggiest (about 95 degrees in Rome in July), so I was eager to return during a cooler time of year. I especially wanted to visit with my husband, since he and I are both history nerds. One of his favorite eras is Ancient Rome, especially during the time of Julius and Augustus Caesar, so I knew he would love visiting the Eternal City.

Here are a few of his favorite books about ancient Rome*:

This year, my husband and I were finally able to arrange our first trip to Italy together. We decided to focus on Rome, with a side trip to Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast, which I remembered enjoying a lot on the Explorica trip.

The Explorica tour was a large group tour where all lodging and transportation, and most meals and activities, were planned for us in advance, so I was a little bit nervous about arranging a whole trip by myself given my very limited Italian skills, but I needn’t have worried. Italy is a major tourist destination for people from all over the world (in addition to Italian, I heard American English, British English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Polish, and Chinese being spoken around us in the streets, plus many more languages I couldn’t identify as quickly in passing) and English is the lingua franca for many of them, regardless of their native language. Nearly everyone we interacted with on our trip spoke some level of English, many quite fluently. Most Romans seemed very happy to hear a little Italian back, so I tried to at least greet and thank people in Italian.

Booking Our Trip

I used Kayak.com to book our flights, Hotels.com to book our hotels, and GetYourGuide.com to book activities. When booking hotels, I noticed a surprisingly large number of hotels in both Rome and Sorrento that do not have front desks that are staffed 24 hours a day, so I was careful to ensure that all three hotels we booked for our trip did have 24 hour front desks.

This turned out to be prescient on my part when our first flight got delayed due to maintenance issues with the plane and we had to be rebooked on later flights, arriving in Rome around 8 PM instead of in the early afternoon. These types of unexpected delays can happen on any airline, so I recommend paying attention to front desk staffing hours when booking hotels in Italy.

Getting To Rome

I booked our first hotel relatively close to Rome’s Termini train station, so we decided to use Trenitalia’s Leonardo Express train to travel from Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport (FCO) to central Rome, rather than taking a taxi or using a hotel shuttle service. The Leonardo Express runs every 15 minutes between FCO and Termini station and costs €14 one-way as of the writing of this post. It takes about half an hour to reach Termini station and from there you can easily catch a taxi, if you need to, or walk to one of the many hotels nearby.

Our First Evening in Rome

Trevi Fountain at night

After checking into our hotel, we set out onto the nearby streets to find food. I did not do a lot of research into restaurants before the trip and didn’t have any “must-have” meals or restaurants I wanted to try, so we were spontaneous about when, where, and what to eat for the whole trip.

This first night, we ended up at Osteria Al Vicolo 9. We got bruschetta al pomodoro, eggplant Parmesan (as an appetizer), salad, spinach ravioli, and cod with olives and capers. I enjoyed my dish (the ravioli), but my husband’s cod was the best. We got tiramisu for dessert, and it had particularly rich mascarpone.

The night air was so pleasant that we decided to walk after dinner, and ended up making it all the way from the restaurant to Trevi Fountain, and then the Pantheon. Both the fountain and the Pantheon were beautifully lit at night, though the interior of the Pantheon was of course closed to visitors by that hour. We loved walking the historic streets, and the area around both attractions was bustling with people even at night.

We were still jet lagged enough that we didn’t get to bed until after midnight (this is quite late by my usual standards, less so by my husband’s) and I took 3 mg of melatonin before bed to help me sleep.

Our First Day in Italy

I didn’t schedule any activities for this day because I wasn’t sure how badly we’d be affected by jet lag and wanted to give us the opportunity to sleep in if necessary. I did, in fact, sleep in until almost 10 AM the next morning (also very late by my usual standards), with some help from the melatonin and the hotel’s blackout curtains.

We considered taking a hop-on, hop-off bus tour, but when we asked the hotel concierge which he recommended, he was adamant that walking was a better way to see the city, and since we love walking anyway, we decided to save the money and set out on foot.

And boy, did we end up walking! My husband tracked our steps on Strava and in total, we walked more than 13 miles this day. My Garmin Instinct 3 watch recorded more than 26,000 steps.

We:

View of the headquarters of the Consiglio Nazionale
Dell’Economia e del Lavoro from the park

After this peaceful side excursion, we returned to the more developed parts of the city:

My original plan had been to do the east bank of the Tiber on this day, and the west bank after returning from Sorrento, but since the mausoleum was so close to the river, we just decided to go ahead and cross it.

Therefore, we:

View of Castel Sant’Angelo from Ponte Sant’Angelo

Reaching the ancient part of the city near sunset turned out to be perfect timing, because the evening light was stunning on the Colosseum and the two triumphal arches.

The Colosseum at sunset

As we were leaving the area near the Colosseum, it started raining, so we hurried back to the hotel to change into dry clothes before venturing back out for dinner. This time, we tried Hostaria al Boschetto on the recommendation of one of the hotel concierges, and especially liked the pasta with clams and the tiramisu.

We went to bed earlier because we had to get up early the next morning for our Colosseum tour, and I once again took 3 mg of melatonin to help me sleep.

Our Colosseum Tour

Because my husband is such a Roman history enthusiast, I decided to book a small group tour of the Colosseum for him rather than a larger group. I booked the tour with Crown Tours via GetYourGuide. Finding the meeting point was easy and the guide was energetic and entertaining. The tour itself included multiple opportunities to stop and take photos, as well as a bathroom break.

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The tour I took back in 2019 included the Colosseum and Forum, but not Palatine Hill, so this time I chose a tour that included some of Palatine Hill as well. Palatine Hill was a wealthy and fashionable neighborhood during the Roman Republic, and many of the later emperors built their palaces there. Our tour visited mainly the Domus Tiberiana on Palatine Hill, including the headquarters of the Praetorian Guard, which was converted to a church after the fall of the Roman empire and had some beautiful early Christian frescoes. Overall, we were pleased with the tour, although I would have liked to spend even more time on Palatine Hill! If you love history as much as we do, the Colosseum, Forum, and Palatine Hill are definitely must-see sights.

On the way back to our hotel, we stopped for lunch at Pizzeria della Madonna dei Monti, which turned out to be my favorite pizza of the three I had in Italy. It had particularly good crust. I got the Vegetarian.

Getting To Sorrento

Our original plan had been to travel to Pompeii, spend the night there, and tour the archaeological park the next morning before continuing to Sorrento, but I’m glad we reconsidered and decided to go straight to Sorrento, since it spared us having to figure out what to do with our luggage in Pompeii. (If you make a different decision, I did notice that the train station in Pompeii offered “luggage lockers”, but I didn’t investigate how much they cost or how secure they are.)

We chose to take a high-speed Trenitalia train from Roma Termini station to Napoli Centrale station. Trains between these two stations are very frequent (about every 20-30 minutes during the day) and the cost was about €104 for two one-way tickets.

I was stressed about buying train tickets in Italy, but it turned out to be a straightforward process. There were Trenitalia ticket vending machines with purchase options in multiple languages, including English, in numerous locations throughout Rome’s Termini station. We did not have any trouble finding the correct tickets or the correct train platform or car. Train seating was assigned and the train itself was comfortable and very fast. It took less than 75 minutes to get from Rome to Naples.

In Naples, we followed the signs to the underground Napoli Piazza Garibaldi station, which is located inside the larger Napoli Centrale station, and EAV’s Circumvesuviana commuter trains (PDF), which are the cheapest and most convenient option to travel from Naples to Sorrento. They run approximately every half an hour between Naples and Sorrento.

This part of the trip was a little trickier than finding our way in Termini Station due to inconsistent signage. Buying tickets was also harder since the EAV ticket vending machine refused to accept our credit card for some reason, so we had to pay cash for the tickets. It did the same to the woman in front of us in line, so it wasn’t an issue with our card. I’m not sure if this is a common issue or if it was just an issue on that particular day.

Eventually, however, we got our tickets and made our way to the correct platform. The Circumvesuviana train was crowded and too warm, despite pleasant 65-70 degree weather outside. These trains also have a reputation for sometimes having pickpockets, although we didn’t experience any issues with this on our trip. Despite these drawbacks, the train got us to our destination cheaply and with no problems. The trip took about an hour.

As an alternative to the Circumvesuviana trains, EAV also offers the Campania Express, which is faster and reportedly less crowded, but only runs four times per day each way.

Our First Evening in Sorrento

We took a taxi from the Sorrento train station to our hotel. I had very fond memories of my previous visit to Sorrento, so I decided to splurge on a nicer hotel with a view and decided on Hotel Conca Park, which was beautiful, comfortable, and clean, with helpful and welcoming staff. We had only one issue during our stay, on our first night. There was a loud party going on downstairs until late at night, but the hotel staff assured us these types of events are quite rare and willingly moved us to a quieter room for the night. Aside from that short-lived issue, we slept extremely well in the beds for the three nights of our stay and enjoyed the gorgeous view of the Bay of Naples from our balcony. The hotel also offered a good breakfast buffet. I especially enjoyed the strawberry yogurt, which wasn’t overly sweet like many hotel yogurts.

After settling in to the hotel, we decided to take a walk in Sorrento and ended up at the waterfront along the Via Marina Grande, where we scored a table right on the water at a restaurant called Porte Marina.

View of the Marina where we ate dinner

It was such a romantic spot, with a gorgeous view of Mt Vesuvius and the lights of the nearby towns, and we enjoyed the food as well. We once again got pasta with clams as our main course and tiramisu for dessert, and both were delicious.

Tour of Pompeii

The next morning we got up early and made our way to Pompeii for our guided tour of the archaeological park. Due to my husband’s love of Roman history, I decided to book a small group tour with a professional archaeologist via Aksos Tours on GetYourGuide.

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We took the 8:50 AM Circumvesuviana train (PDF) from Sorrento to the Pompei Scavi – Villa dei Misteri station to be sure of having enough time to make it to Pompeii for our 10:30 AM tour. This got us there a bit early, so we sipped some very over-priced orange juice at one of the restaurants near the train station while we were waiting.

The tour itself was great. The guide was indeed a working archaeologist from the Pompeii dig, and she was very knowledgeable and interesting. The tour took us to many of the same highlights as my previous tour in 2019, such as the House of Menander and the Teatro Grande, but also to a number of sites that my shorter previous tour had missed.

We also got to see the New Dig section, which was opened to the public just last year. It was so interesting to learn about the latest discoveries archaeologists are making about the town and its last inhabitants. Unfortunately, this area has a strict no photographs rule. Our guide recommended a documentary by the BBC called Pompeii: The New Dig for English speakers interested in learning more about the recent discoveries from the excavations.

The other highlight of the sites I hadn’t seen in my previous tour of Pompeii was the Villa dei Misteri itself, which was a bit outside of the main part of town but had some truly stunning wall frescoes and mosaic floors.

Villa dei Misteri, Pompeii

One thing to note about Pompeii is that it really is an entire small town and it covers a very large area. Our three-hour tour covered less than half the park. Be prepared to do a lot of walking!

Depending on the time of day, there often is not a lot of shade, which wasn’t a major issue in the pleasant October temperatures of this trip, but was a much bigger problem in the hot July temperatures of my previous visit.

Finally, the old Roman roads are in remarkably good shape considering that they’ve survived ancient cart traffic, earthquakes, the volcano eruption, and the footsteps of millions of visitors every year, but they can still be pretty rutted and uneven in some areas.

Sun protection, water, and comfortable walking shoes are all musts for visiting Pompeii.

Unfortunately, we were not able to visit the excavations at Herculaneum on this trip or my previous one, which was a little disappointing since I’ve been interested in going there since I read The Secrets of Vesuvius, by Sara Bisel, as a child, but to look on the bright side, this gives me an excuse to go back to this beautiful region of the world again some day to finally see it!

Dinner in Sorrento

We liked the setting of the marina so much we decided to eat there again, but to try a different restaurant. As we were getting seated at Ndulì Osteria Di Mare, however, my husband said, “hey, weren’t you at the other restaurant yesterday?” to the waiter and it turns out that both restaurants are not only owned by the same family, but have the same menu. So that sort of defeated the purpose of trying a different restaurant. However, we enjoyed the food at Porte Marina the night before enough that we decided to stay and just order different dishes. I got the seafood risotto, which was great, and my husband got the special of the day, a grilled sea bass.

According to our waiter, Ndulì Osteria Di Mare was the original of the two restaurants, owned by the same family for four generations. He told us it started out serving only one dish: his great-grandmother’s seafood soup with bread and wine.

A Day of Rest

The next day we had planned to go to Capri, but when we woke up there were high winds making the waters very choppy and we decided that we didn’t want to risk becoming a seasickness statistic. Instead we walked more through the town of Sorrento, window shopping and enjoying the quaint streets and beautiful views of the Bay of Naples and the Lattari Mountains.

The view from our balcony at Hotel Conca Park

We returned to the hotel and passed a very pleasant afternoon reading and working with the balcony open to enjoy the fresh air, before venturing back out to the streets. We decided to eat in town this night and tried a restaurant called Tasso that was a bit fancier than we expected, but delicious.

Return To Rome

The next day it was time to return to Rome. We were hoping to catch the Campania Express in order to compare it with the regular Circumvesuviana trains (PDF), but unfortunately, the 10:20 Campania Express was already sold out, so rather than wait three hours until the next one, we just took the Circumvesuviana train again instead. Return tickets from Naples to Rome were even easier to navigate after our previous experience buying tickets to Naples.

As I mentioned earlier, my original plan had been to visit St Peter’s Square on this day, so I’d booked a hotel closer to Vatican City and further from the train station. We decided to take a taxi rather than walking so far with all our luggage.

Our hotel, Hotel Navona Colors, was clean and comfortable and located near Piazza Navona.

After checking in, we decided to explore more of the park at Villa Borghese, mostly in the area around the Temple of Aesculapius.

As a Shakespeare enthusiast, I wanted to try to see the Globe Theater replica but it was closed off and mostly obscured from view by trees.

We took photos at the overlook near the bust of Father Angelo Secchi.

View of Rome

Then decided as long as we were so close to the Spanish Steps, we might as well go down them again.

From there we headed back in the direction of the hotel and started looking for food since we were both hungry after skipping lunch due to the train journey. Unfortunately, my husband was really in the mood for soup, which seems to be not as common on menus in Italy as it is in America, plus it was still a little early for dinner by Italian standards (many restaurants don’t even open until 7 PM). We checked a bunch of menus but nobody had soup, so we finally went to basically the first open restaurant we found that did, which turned out to be rated 3.9 on Google when I belatedly checked after sitting down. I feel that rating was about right: the service was friendly but quite slow and the pizza crust was good on the outside but soggy in the middle. So it was just an okay dinner for our final night in Italy, alas. At least my husband was happy with his soup.

Last Day

The next morning we woke up early to eat breakfast at the hotel, and then walked over to St. Peter’s again. It was Sunday, so they were preparing for the Pope to celebrate Mass later in the morning, and there were other early arrivals singing hymns in their chairs as they waited. We considered staying, but neither of us is Catholic and the time conflicted with the check-out time for our hotel, so we eventually decided not to and instead returned to the hotel to finish packing, check out, and leave our bags with the concierge before taking one last walk around the city.

As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to see more of Palatine Hill, but it was a longer walk from Hotel Navona Colors than our previous hotel, so I was hemming and hawing a bit about whether it would be a good idea or better to go somewhere closer to the hotel. Eventually, however, I couldn’t resist and we made the trek. The lines were already very long to get in, so we didn’t attempt it and just walked around the outskirts, which still offered some neat views of:

We also got to go into part of the Circus Maximus.

I’m a little sad we couldn’t go inside to explore more, but still very pleased we went back to the area, it was cool to see even that much and to imagine the whole hill covered in shining marble palaces.

On the way out of the area, we also went by:

There’s really historical stuff around every corner in Rome!

Returning to the hotel brought us past the Parthenon again, but we decided to try lunch at a little spot called La Tavernetta 48 down a much quieter street near the hotel and were happy with the decision. They had a fixed price menu with a starter that day of linguine with shrimp and tomatoes (excellent) and a second course of lemon chicken escalopes (also great).

Then we got gelato at an açaí bowl place I noticed the previous day, which was really good. I should have gotten a larger portion. 😆

As we were walking back, we noticed the Napoleon Museum had free admission, so we ducked into that. It had a nice collection of mostly art and a few artifacts in a cool setting.

Returned to the hotel and decided that rather than taking a taxi to the train station to catch the Leonardo Express, we’d just take the taxi all the way to the airport. As of the writing of this post, Roman taxis offer a fixed price of 55 euros to the airport.

And so ended our trip to Italy. I knew from experience that I was going to love it, and I was happy that my husband did as well. In fact, he liked it so much he suggested going back every year! This isn’t likely to happen for any number of reasons, not least of which is that there are other parts of the world we want to explore as well. However, I do definitely want to go back again. Maybe next time we can spend some time in Florence or Venice. And one of these days I still want to explore Herculaneum and more of Palatine Hill, too.

All photos by me.

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