Base yourself in Sorrento.
Capri before the day boats land, Pompeii before the heat, the Amalfi Coast by sea instead of by road. Every tour that leaves the peninsula, with what it costs and which one to take.
What everyone books out of Sorrento.
Every review →A handful of tours carry more of the peninsula’s traffic than the rest of the catalogue put together. Here is what each one gives you for the day, and where it actually goes.
1
Entry Ticket and Guided Tour with an Archaeologist
Pompeii archaeologist guided tour with skip-the-line entry, small group up to 20, key homes and ruins in about 2 hours for $35.
From · $35
Read our review →
2
Entry Ticket with Optional Audio Guide
from $26
3
Small Group Tour with an Archaeologist
from $40
4
Pompeii Small Group Tour with an Archaeologist
from $35
5
Island Boat Trip with Grottos
from $28
6
Exclusive Capri Boat Tour and Optional Blue Grotto
from $143
7
Sorrento Farm and Food Experience including Olive Oil, Limoncello, Wine tasting
from $114
8
Capri Blue Grotto Small-Group Boat Day Tour From Sorrento
from $131
The days a Sorrento week is built around.
The island, the coast road, the buried city, the crater, the wood oven, and the cave you can only enter when the sea is flat. Fix these first and the rest of the week arranges itself.
Everyone goes to Capri. Almost nobody plans it.
All 155 Capri tours →
The island sits forty minutes off Sorrento, and the difference between a good day and a wasted one is which boat you are on when the ferries unload. These three take the most travellers; the full list splits the rest by how much of the island you actually want.
Around the island, grottoes and all
Out past the Faraglioni, into the green and white caves on the far side, an anchor drop where the water goes vertical, then time in Marina Grande before the last boat back.
The Blue Grotto, if the sea allows
You transfer out of the tour boat into a wooden skiff and lie flat to clear the rock. Five minutes inside, paid in cash to the oarsman, and half a metre of swell shuts it for the day.
A skipper, a small boat, your own clock
Worth it the moment you want to swim somewhere without forty other people: you choose the anchor stops, you decide when to eat, and you get into water the day boats cannot reach.
Positano and Amalfi are closer to Sorrento by sea than by road.
In August the coast road is three hours of coach bumper and blind bends. The boat is under an hour, puts you on the beach at Positano, and gives you the side of the coastline the postcards are actually shot from.
Pompeii is a town, not a ruin. Give it half a day.
Sixty-six hectares of streets, bakeries and bath houses, with the Circumvesuviana dropping you at the gate. Go on the early train, take someone who can read a wall, and keep the afternoon for the mountain that did it.
A day out of Sorrento, by what you want to spend.
Every tour on the site sorted into three brackets, with the most-taken in each. The cheap end is not the thin end here — some of the best mornings on this water are the cheapest things on the list.
Site entries with a guide, the ferry-and-walk days, tastings up in the lemon terraces.
The standard day out: the Capri circuit, the coast by sea, Pompeii and the crater together.
Your own skipper, a car and driver for the coast road, and the small groups that cap at eight.
Half a metre of swell closes the Blue Grotto. It does not close Sorrento.
A few days a month the bay turns choppy and the small boats stay tied up. That is the day to go inland and under a roof: a wood oven on a farm above the town, the painted walls at Pompeii, a cellar where the lemons are growing outside the window.
A cave, a lemon terrace and a footpath in the sky.
Boat trips and cooking classes exist all over the Mediterranean. These three belong to this stretch of coast and nowhere else, and each one has a catch worth knowing before you book it.
The Blue Grotto
The entrance is barely a metre high, so you transfer out of the tour boat into a wooden rowing skiff and lie flat on your back to get under the rock. Inside, the light arrives up through the water instead of down through the air, and the whole cave turns the colour it is named after. The oarsman gives you about five minutes and is paid in cash at the mouth. Half a metre of swell closes it — which is why it belongs early in a trip, not on the last morning.
- 1Exclusive Capri Boat Tour and Optional Blue Grotto★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 3,170 reviews
- 2Capri Blue Grotto Small-Group Boat Day Tour From Sorrento★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,511 reviews
- 3Island Boat Tour with Blue Grotto Stop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 2,071 reviews
The Lemon Terraces
The slopes behind the town are stepped in dry-stone walls and roofed with chestnut poles, and the lemons grown under them come out the size of a fist. That fruit is what limoncello is actually made of — the peel steeped in spirit, never the juice. Most of the farms are still family-run and still working: the olive press going, mozzarella pulled at eleven, and lunch made from whatever else is growing that week.
- 1Sorrento Farm and Food Experience including Olive Oil, Limoncello, Wine tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,524 reviews
- 2Pizza Lesson, Wine, and Limoncello at a Local Farm★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,513 reviews
- 3Hands-On Cooking Class & Farmhouse Tour on the Amalfi Coast★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 956 reviews
The Path of the Gods
The Sentiero degli Dei runs the ridge from Bomerano across to Nocelle with the coast dropping away below and Capri parked on the horizon the whole way. It is a shade under eight kilometres and mostly downhill walked west, then it finishes with a staircase of roughly 1,500 steps into Positano. The walking is easy; the staircase is the part people remember, and the buses at either end are the part they forget to check.
- 1Path of the Gods Guided Hike with Transfers★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 530 reviews
- 2Guided Day Hike on the Path of the Gods with Sorrento Transfer★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 265 reviews
- 3Hike The Path Of Gods from Sorrento★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 208 reviews
Sorrento eats to a timetable: mozzarella at eleven, pizza at seven.
The classes up here are not hotel-ballroom demonstrations. They run on working farms in the hills behind the town — mozzarella pulled in front of you, dough into a wood oven you can see, and lunch assembled from whatever else the place grows that month.
- 1Sorrento Farm and Food Experience including Olive Oil, Limoncello, Wine tastingfrom $114
- 2Pizza Lesson, Wine, and Limoncello at a Local Farmfrom $94
- 3Hands-On Cooking Class & Farmhouse Tour on the Amalfi Coastfrom $156
Four things you cannot fix at the hotel desk in Sorrento.
Most of the bay can be arranged the night before over a drink on Piazza Tasso. These four run on entry caps, park slots and boats that hold eight, and they are gone by the time you land.
- 01Entry Ticket and Guided Tour with an ArchaeologistPompeii caps how many people it admits in a day, and the archaeologist-led morning slots are the first to go.
- 02Bus Transfer to Vesuvius with Park Entry FeeThe crater path is sold as a timed park entry. Arrive without one and you walk back down to the car park.
- 03Private Boat Tour of CapriOne skipper, one boat, one party a day. July and August are taken weeks ahead.
- 04Hands-On Cooking Class & Farmhouse Tour on the Amalfi CoastA farmhouse kitchen seats eight or ten and runs a single sitting. There is no second table.
Sorrento faces west, which is the entire point at seven o’clock.
All sunset cruises →
Bella Sorrento Evening ‘Progressive Dinner’ Experience
Read our review →Sorrento in three days, in the order that works.
Path of the GodsBy place — around the bay
Capri155 tours
Positano104 tours- Amalfi Coast189 tours
Pompeii230 tours
Vesuvius65 tours
Herculaneum43 tours
Ischia25 tours
Procida9 tours
Ravello11 tours- Everywhere the boats go →
Latest Sorrento tour reviews.
All recent →
Herculaneum with an Archaelogical Guide & Ticket
Read our review →
Sorrento Cooking Class: Taste the Tradition feel the Love
Read our review →
Wine Tasting Overlooking the Sea in a Lemon Grove
Read our review →
walking in the Grand Tour with stunning landscapes
Read our review →
Guided Walking Tour of Sorrento with Limoncello Tasting
Read our review →
Swim, Dine and Toast on Sorrento Coast Sunset Tour
Read our review →