Salvatore Lucibello - Drive Amalfi

Anyone have any experiences - good or bad - with Salvatore of Drive Amalfi? I have booked him for our Naples port.

Thanks for the help

Susan

Susan,

He gets rave reviews. I think if you do a search of drive amalfi or salvatore you'll come up with lots of positive feedback. I was in contact with him just this past week in case our arrangements with Francesco didn't work out, and Salvatore replied promptly and then answered all of my follow up questions.

This is an excerpt from the email I received from him. I know you are on a different sailing, however someone else in Naples on the 28th may want his services:

P.S. If you are active on a Roll Call for your Cruise I would be grateful if you could let it be known that we still have Driver/Guides and Vans available on June 28th from Naples and they are more than welcome to contact me for information.

Hi Susan,

Salvatore was our driver in the fall of '05 ... he is very good. Not overly talkative, but friendly, informative, cautious driver and very reliable. There was a traffic jam on the highway coming into Naples ... some other drivers were late arriving to pick people up, but Salvatore was waiting as he makes sure that he allows extra time getting there in the morning in case of traffic problems. We had a really enjoyable day seeing the Amalfi coast and Pompeii!

We used Salvatore in July 2005 for an Amalfi Coast tour. He was excellent and I highly recommend him. Susan M's comments above were exactly our experience with Salvatore.... informative, laid back, cautious driver, not overly talkative. He took us to an excellent restaurant for lunch where we dined on an outdoor patio perched high above the sea. The food was outstanding, reasonably priced, all with an enjoyable view.

You can't go wrong with Salvatore!

:) we did drive amalfi but our guide was Roberto...most memorable tour we have been on to date ..lunch as great...shopping excellent and not having to deal with bus loads of cruisers was a plus too due to the topography of the area:)

We enjoyed every moment of our tour with Salvatore in 2006. When we go back this September, we booked with him again (this time we'll have Roberto, as Salvatore was already booked).

I can't imagine anyone not enjoying Salvatore's services.

:) we did drive amalfi but our guide was Roberto...most memorable tour we have been on to date ..lunch as great...shopping excellent and not having to deal with bus loads of cruisers was a plus too due to the topography of the area:)

We also did a tour with Roberto last fall. He was great. One thing to keep in mind. You can't see everything. Before you go, discuss what exactly what you want to see, and stick to you your guns. I did the tour with several Cruise Critic people. We didn't talk about it before hand. We just went on the tour and did what Roberto did. We pretty much drove down to Positano and drove through the town. We did get out on a overlook above Positano, though. We stopped in Amalfi and had lunch, which took quite awhile. By the time we got to Pompeii we had less than an hour and a half. We hired a guide there, but she didn't take us to much of Pompeii. I think if I had to do it again. I would of gone to Herkalanium, it's much smaller and closer to Naples than Pompeii. And to keep an eye on the time spent having lunch. And would of gone to Sorrento, rather than Amalfi.

It doesn't get any better than a tour with Salvatore and he is nice to look at too.

Check out my blog for our day with Salvatore.

http://calberrymedcruise.blogspot.com/2007/10/post-24-naples.html

As you can see I had some formatting issues with the comments on the pictures, but with the cost of internet time while on the ship I did NOT spend much time trying to correct them.

The only negative about the whole day was the amount of time he spent on the cell phone. Although we didn't feel like we lost any 'content', we did at times feel like his mind was somewhere else. But that is a very minor, ticky-tacky complaint. All in all the day was GREAT. The van was spacious (there were 8 of us) and we had no problems hearing him even in the back of the van as he explained what we were seeing as we were driving along.

Just remember that it is your day, your tour, and your Euros, so you can set the schedule as you wish (ie more time here, less time there, short lunch, long lunch, more time at Pompei, Pompei first, Pompei last, etc.). But we felt he was the expert so just put our day in his hands...no regrets!

And try to get Franco at Pompei as your personal guide. WONDERFUL man!!!

Steve

 

The only negative about the whole day was the amount of time he spent on the cell phone. Although we didn't feel like we lost any 'content', we did at times feel like his mind was somewhere else.

Hi Steve,

That surprised me as well ... as mentioned in my post above, we were very pleased with him, but I did wonder about all the calls. I think it was a combination of keeping in touch with other drivers to find out about traffic and perhaps keeping in touch with the person who helps him with bookings... not sure, but cell phone time in Italy must be extremely cheap!