Pete R.
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We started our self-guided tour at the Piazza Anfiteatro entrance, which is not the primary entrance, as many of the tourism office will yell at you while you are walking toward it, trying to get you to talk to them. But it is a great entrance with one minor issue, if you get an audio guide you have to make your way back to the entrance to return the audio guide and recover your ID, in our case our passport. But it is fine to start here and view the beautiful forum first and make your way down through the many streets. The audio guide costs 8€ for one or 13€ for two. They consist of an older smartphone sized device which you have to put up to your ear to listen to. If you have headsets with a 9mm jack you can plug in and listen, but they do not have a speakerphone and do not support Bluetooth. If you’re doing a self-guided tour the audio guide is worth it, but they do use up your hands and make it difficult to take photos.
We got the Pompei Plus pass which included access to the Villas. We did it feel it was worth the extra money. There are some neat things but there just isn’t enough time to see the ruins and the Villas in one day. Also, the other issue is, if you hit the Villas after 3:30 they close the road back up and you have to exit there and walk all around the site to get back to where you started, basically losing about 1.5 hours as they will not let you back in. This was our biggest issue as we weren’t told about the closing of the entrance to the Villas and the guy at the entrance was very rude.
Other than that, the Pompeii site has some amazing sites to see. Highlights of what we saw on our self-guided tour are: Amphitheater, Teatro, Brothels, Temple of Jupiter, climb to the top of the building at the North end of Via di Mercurio.
Just do the Express if you only have one day to visit.