I spent 10 incredible days in Italy with my father and brother, with lots of affection, laughter, trips to beautiful places and, of course, delicious meals. It was a very special trip and certainly unforgettable for us and also for Ba, my brother's friend who joined us during the trip. In the end, we ended up visiting Rome, Caserta, Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast and Capri. It was a busy, but wonderful trip! <3

Summary Itinerary

As we already knew some cities in Italy, we decided to make a new itinerary for everyone, so we ended up going to Caserta, Pompeii, Amalfi Coast and Capri, in addition to Pomegranate because of the flights to/from Ireland and Brazil. The route on the map was then as follows:

This is the table summary of our trip:

Accommodations

We stayed in the cities below in the following hotels/apartments:

Pomegranate 

• Experience Roma Terrace – Spagna District – super well located apartment near Piazza di Spagna (the best neighborhood in Rome, in my humble opinion). It’s a huge bedroom and living room with a spacious bathroom and a mini kitchen, but we were very comfortable with a double bed and a sofa bed (there were 3 of us).

Pompeii

• B&B Elena – we stayed at this highly rated B&B in Pompeii and really liked the service and the room. The breakfast was nothing special, but I thought the location was excellent as it was close to the best pizzeria in town (I’ll talk more about it later). post detailed) and the city's main attraction.

Vico Equense (our base for the Amalfi Coast)

• Residence Le Axidie – this city is not on the Amalfi Coast, but it was where we decided to make our base to explore the region. We were looking for a hotel with a pool and facing a beautiful beach suitable for diving, and this hotel had exactly that without costing an arm and a leg. The hotel itself is not wonderful, and there are frequent problems with the wifi and food was pretty average, but being able to walk from the room to a private beach and then relax in the pool with a spectacular view was totally worth it… Oh, we still managed to get our ferry to Capri right there and we left the car parked at the hotel at no cost. Perfect combination!

Anacapri

•  Villa Eva – The island of Capri must be the most expensive place in Italy and when I started looking for hotels for us there, I was taken aback by the daily rates. We decided to stay in AnaCapri, a city cheaper than Capri (there are only those options on the island), and even so we still paid a lot for my standards. The good thing is that our hotel was VERY nice, with a pool, a beautiful garden and a bar/restaurant that catered to us very well. The breakfast was great and the owner was very friendly too, but be prepared to spend money on taxis, because it is far from the center of AnaCapri and even farther from Capri.

Pomegranate

• Suite Spanish Apartment – For the last days of our trip to Rome, we decided to stay in Piazza di Spagna again. We chose this apartment, which has a wonderful location, but we had a headache with the air conditioning leaking in the middle of the room. I hope they have already fixed this.

Transport

We rent the car with full insurance through website from the RentalCars (as always!) with the company Poplar and we ended up having a upgrade for an automatic car, which was essential – I’ll explain why later. We picked up the car at the train station termini, in Rome, we went down to Caserta, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast. When it was time to go to Capri, we left the car parked at the hotel and took a ferry there (that's what everyone does, because only locals drive in Capri. When the tour in Capri was over, we went back ferry to the hotel where the car was and drove back to Rome, where we returned the car at the same train station.

The total cost of the car rental for the week was just over 200 euros, with full insurance and an extra driver, all the tolls cost around 40 euros and petrol for the whole trip came to less than 50. (Sorry, I'm an engineer and I love writing down numbers!)

The automatic car was super important for the trip along the winding roads of the Amafiltana Coast, because it would be horrible to drive through those thousands of curves, constantly downshifting and upshifting (I'll tell you more later). post of the Coast.).

So now you know: If you're going to the Amalfi Coast by car, rent an automatic! If you don't want to drive, you can also visit by boat.

Restaurants

Italian food is wonderful and very caloric, right? I love pasta and seafood, so I ate that practically every day, until I couldn't take it anymore and switched to meat or chicken. We used TripAdvisor and our intuition to choose restaurants and some were great and others not so much, but I'll talk about them later. posts of the cities. Here are some photos of these divine dishes:

Attractions we visited

Let's summarize what we did!

Rome, Caserta and Pompeii

• Between Rome and Pompeii, we decided to stop at a Palace mentioned in my guidebook. Lonely Planet located in Caserta. What a pleasant surprise! He is considered the Italian Palace of Versailles and it's really beautiful! It could be better looked after, but it's still worth a visit.
• Then we went to see the city of Pompeii and we made a tour 2-hour guided tour in English through the open-air museum. It was impressive to see everything and hear explanations of every little detail. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

Amalfi Coast

• We continued from Pompeii to our hotel in Vico Equense, not a touristy city, and from there we drove to see the cities of Amalfi Coast. We parked the car to see Positano and Ravello, but we went through Amalfi, Beachy and some other beauties of the region. I confess that I didn't die of love... I found Cinque Terre more interesting and without so much pomp, you know?

Capri and Anacapri

• We took one ferry from our hotel in Vico Equense and we went straight to Capri, a wonderful and very expensive island that has two cities, Capri and Anacapri. We stayed in Anacapri, the cheapest of the two, and we loved it! We took a spectacular private boat tour around the island, walked around the city centers of both cities and really enjoyed our hotel with its impeccable pool and garden. It was where we really rested.

Rome and Vatican

• In Pomegranate, we stayed in Piazza di Spagna and walked around the area a lot. One day we took the Hop On Hop Off bus, and it was with it that I was able to tour the entire city with my father, who had already visited the same place 25 years ago. It was super convenient, because it was really hot and the attractions in Rome are quite far from each other. The only attractions we really wanted to go into were the Vatican Museum (I bought the tickets in advance, of course!) and the St. Peter's Basilica. Otherwise, we just passed by because we already knew it.

Detailed Itineraries

If you want to know more about the places we visited above, see the posts below:

• Italy – Caserta and Pompeii (1 day)
• Italy – Amalfi Coast (3 days)
• Italy – Capri and Anacapri (3 days)
• Italy – Rome and Vatican (2 days)

Our trip in photos

Want to know more about THIS TRIP? See the posts below:

• Italy – Rome, Amalfi Coast, Capri, Pompeii and Caserta (10 days – SUMMARY)
• Italy – Caserta and Pompeii (1 day)
• Italy – Amalfi Coast (3 days)
• Italy – Capri and Anacapri (3 days)
• Italy – Rome and Vatican (2 days)

If you want to know more about our other trips around Italy, see below:

• Italy – Rome, Tuscany, Bologna and Cinque Terre (14 days -SUMMARY)
• Italy – Rome and Vatican (4 days)
• Italy – Bologna (1 day)
• Italy – Tuscany – Summary (4 days)
• Italy – Tuscany – San Gimignano and Volterra (1 day)
• Italy – Tuscany – Florence (2 days)
• Italy – Tuscany – Lucca (1 day)
• Italy – Tuscany – Monteriggioni and Siena (1 day)
• Italy – Tuscany – Montepulciano and Cortona (1 day)
• Italy – Tuscany – Pisa (1 day)
• Italy – Cinque Terre (2 days)

If you are looking for tours in Italy, check out the suggestions from our partner Civitatis: