Pompeii Travel Guide: Tips and Money Saving Tricks | Italy

In this video we show you how we navigated the ancient city of Pompeii in just half a day, all while saving some money along the way. Stick around for this video to see how we did it and some extra bonus footage of what a wedding on the Amalfi coast looks like. Yes, this morning we have made it to the ancient city of Pompeii. This is over a 2,000 year old civilization that was like basically frozen in time from Mount Vesuvius and a volcano that erupted. So to be completely honest with you, I don't know too much about Pompeii, so I'm excited to learn today. But let's get exploring. At about noon on August 24th, 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted, sending a mushroom cloud of ash, dust, cinders, and rocks 12 miles into the air. So you can see behind me here that mountain, that is Mount Vesuvius. That is the volcano that erupted and kind of preserved this civilization. What's crazy about the volcano and Mount Vesuvius is the people living here, when it erupted, that was the first time that they found out that it was a volcano. Nobody had any idea that Mount Vesuvius was actually a volcano until it erupted because the last time it erupted was like 1,200 years prior, which is crazy. A mountain that turns into a volcano in a split second. These beaver-teeth stones are traffic barriers that kept chariots from entering the pedestrian-only street. You know what I find actually be really interesting is that all of these roads here have this like inset or they're like these huge curbs because they had really like no drainage here in Pompeii. When it rained, basically the streets would just flood and you'll also see like these stepping stones to get across. They would also flood the streets to clean them because I'm pretty sure they didn't have much sewage system. But really interesting how every single street has that depth to it. Another crazy thing about these roads that I find so fascinating is that you can actually see where the chariots used to go across and they've kind of wore down a path, which is just so fascinating to think about that these like treads are visible. A couple little facts that I don't think I mentioned yet is that this city of Pompeii, the ancient city, when the volcano struck or erupted was 20,000 in population. As well as to give you some context of how old it is, this all happened in 79 AD, which obviously was very very long time ago. So here we are standing in the amphitheater. It's kind of like dug into the ground but how cool is this? You can still see some remnants of like seating. Most of it's just grass now but very cool. Okay Pompeii, I wanted to give you some of my thoughts as well as some potential tips if you plan on going for yourself. Now Pompeii is especially amazing if you enjoy history, if you're kind of a history buff, as well as if you enjoy kind of just learning about cultures and civilizations that lived thousands of years ago. One thing that I took away is that they were far more advanced than I expected for being a civilization that existed 2,000 years ago. Now to offer you some tips as far as going there, as far as cost goes, we paid $22 for a general entrance fee. Now you can definitely pay for guided trips and stuff like that so if that interests you I would highly recommend it. We just did a free kind of our own free walking version which works well for us and we just downloaded the Rick Steves podcast which you've heard us talk about this before. We really enjoy them. He kind of guides you around and you get to see the stuff that's probably the most important stuff or that the highlights. Now you're not going to get all the details that you would get in a traditional tour guide but for us it works really really well. Now another tip as far as going to Pompeii, I would highly recommend just like any of these heavy tourist attractions, make sure you're getting there early. It tends to get hot later in the afternoon, the crowds tend to get big. One thing that was unexpected for us was that it is much much bigger than we thought and to be honest with you we kind of actually had to rush the last like hour. You could easily spend five hours there, no problem. There is so much to see so I would make sure that you allow for enough time. That's really important especially if you want to see the entire kind of ancient city but overall Pompeii was an absolutely amazing experience again especially if you're a history buff and you're looking for something to learn about. So anyway hopefully you enjoyed some of that footage. Now I maybe mentioned this in another video but we are in Italy specifically Amalfi for a friend's wedding. Now as you can see the view behind me we are absolutely in an amazing place. It is so dreamy and last night we had the pleasure of going to our friend's wedding. It was absolutely beautiful, probably one of the more breathtaking weddings I've ever been to. Maybe even the most breathtaking wedding I've ever been to. I'll insert some footage right now from it. Now being that we're in Amalfi I kind of wanted to show you our accommodation for the week. Now we are staying here in a villa with 22 of our other friends which has been an absolute blast and I just wanted to show you around this villa. Now I will preface this is definitely something that is a little bit more fancier than me and Meg would book on our own but being that we are here with 22 people we can kind of share the cost and we get spoiled here. I will just say that. I'm going to show you around a little bit here starting with this amazing view right over here. That view honestly never gets old. Now as far as space here there's plenty of it. There's 22 of us staying here and almost everyone has their own bedroom with their own bathroom. This villa is three levels in total and the top level being my favorite part which that's what I'm going to go show you right now. Now we are on the top floor of the villa here again which is my favorite part and right behind me here is a full bar with refrigerator sinks and such but back here behind me there's a wood wood burning stove which the first night here we had a little welcome party for all the people coming to the wedding and they baked like fresh pizza. Now we're going to walk over here which this is going to give you another look at the amazing view. Look at this. Are you kidding me? And now down here we can look at all the big yachts and even more fancy people than us but look at this view. It's crazy. Now as I was saying earlier there's plenty of space to entertain up here. Actually the morning before the wedding we did a workout up here with all our friends which was kind of fun. So there's plenty of space to move around and entertain a good probably 60 people if you need it. Now up here is kind of like a little extra level where we have some hammocks here to relax just above the pool which a bunch of our friends are in the pool including Meg right now. Great place to just hang out with your friends and enjoy the weather and scenery. That is going to be it for this video. Hopefully you guys enjoyed following along getting to see a small glimpse of Pompeii the ancient city that was covered by a volcano over 2,000 years ago as well as you got a small glimpse into a little bit more of our personal life hanging out with friends in Amalfi enjoying and celebrating one of our friends weddings. It has been truly an amazing time so far in Italy and we're super thankful and grateful for our friends and just the ability to do this. So thanks for watching this video and we will see you in the next adventure. Out for a little jog this morning.