Another side trip from Sorrento is the Blue Grotto. It's eerily beautiful.

A tour of Pompeii is probably useful. But since I had read so much about it before going (it was one of my "must sees" in Italy), my niece and I didn't take a tour. We just took the train from Sorrento and wandered away from all the tour groups. Being away from the large crowds let us feel the history - how it was to have lived there and walked the streets. I also bought a little book that I just loved called "Pompeii - past and present". It has pictures of the ruins with plastic overlays showing what the experts think the whole looked like.

Marguerite in Chicagoland