Egypt Classic Tour: 7 Days in Cairo, on the Nile and in Luxor

Arrival in Cairo, and nothing else

Our representative waits on the airside of passport control holding your name and walks you through immigration to your driver. A private car takes you to the hotel, with no taxi rank to negotiate.

Then we leave you alone, and that is deliberate. New York to Cairo is over ten hours nonstop, Los Angeles closer to sixteen with a connection, and Cairo runs seven hours ahead of US Eastern. Selling you a pyramid visit that afternoon would be selling you a day you cannot use.

Sites: none. Meals: none included today. Night: Cairo hotel.

The Giza plateau, the Sphinx and old Cairo

The big one, and we start early. You are on the plateau while the light is still low: Khufu, Khafre with its cap of casing stone still clinging on, Menkaure, then the viewpoint where all three line up and the scale registers. Last comes the Sphinx, smaller than the photographs suggest and stranger in person. Going inside the Great Pyramid is a separate 1,500 EGP ticket at the plateau office.

After lunch, the Citadel of Saladin and, inside it, the Alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali. Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off, and women are handed a scarf for the prayer hall.

Sites: Giza pyramids, Great Sphinx, Citadel of Saladin, Alabaster Mosque. Meals: breakfast. Night: Cairo hotel.

The Grand Egyptian Museum and Khan el-Khalili

The morning belongs to the Grand Egyptian Museum, at the foot of the plateau. The grand staircase climbs past colossal statuary to a window framing the pyramids, and the Tutankhamun galleries hold the complete tomb assemblage together for the first time. It is a very large building, and a guide who knows what to skip earns their fee here. Want the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square too? Say so when you book: the gate is 550 EGP.

Then Khan el-Khalili, trading on the same lanes since the fourteenth century: hammered copper, lanterns, spice sacks. Bargaining is expected, and your guide will tell you a fair opening number.

Sites: Grand Egyptian Museum, Khan el-Khalili bazaar. Meals: breakfast. Night: Cairo hotel.

Fly to Aswan, board the ship, Philae and the High Dam

Transfer to the domestic terminal for the short flight to Aswan, included and ticketed. It saves the better part of a day against the road, which is why a seven day itinerary works at all.

Aswan is the calmest city in the country. You board your ship on arrival and it is your hotel for three nights, every meal included from here on. The same day you see the Aswan High Dam, which created Lake Nasser, then the Temple of Philae, a temple to Isis cut into pieces and rebuilt on higher ground when the water rose. You reach it by motorboat, which is half the pleasure. Travelers who want Abu Simbel added from Aswan take it as an optional excursion today.

Sites: Aswan High Dam, Philae Temple. Meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner. Night: aboard the ship in Aswan.

Sailing north: Kom Ombo and Edfu

Today the ship moves, which is what justifies doing the Nile by water rather than by highway. Kom Ombo is a double temple split with unusual symmetry between Sobek the crocodile god and Horus the elder: two sanctuaries, two entrances, one roof, with a museum of mummified crocodiles next door. Edfu is the Temple of Horus, the most completely preserved temple in Egypt, with a full pylon, an intact roof and a dark sanctuary where the granite shrine still stands. It survived because silt buried it for centuries.

The rest of the afternoon is deck time: date palms, mud brick villages, feluccas crossing the bow. If the river is your real reason for coming, our Aswan to Luxor Nile cruise runs the same water on its own.

Sites: Kom Ombo Temple, Temple of Horus at Edfu. Meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner. Night: aboard the ship.

Luxor: Valley of the Kings, Karnak and Luxor Temple

Luxor holds more standing antiquity per square mile than anywhere on earth, and you get both banks in one day. Start early on the west bank, because by eleven the Valley of the Kings is genuinely hot. Your ticket covers three tombs, and your guide steers you toward the ones open that week with the best surviving paint. That color is three thousand years old and has never been retouched.

Then the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, terraced into the cliff at Deir el-Bahari, built for a woman who ruled as pharaoh and whose successors tried to erase her from the record. The Colossi of Memnon stand beside the road on the way back, all that is left of a lost temple.

The east bank in the late afternoon: Karnak, where the hypostyle hall and its 134 columns is the most overwhelming room in Egypt, then Luxor Temple in the last of the light.

Sites: Valley of the Kings with 3 tombs, Hatshepsut Temple, Colossi of Memnon, Karnak, Luxor Temple. Meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner. Night: aboard the ship in Luxor, or a Luxor hotel.

Luxor, and the flight home

A last breakfast with the river in front of you. Depending on your flight time there is usually room for a walk along the corniche. Then a private transfer to Luxor airport, where you fly out direct or connecting through Cairo on your own ticket. Our services end there, so build a sensible connection window into your homeward booking, and ask us first if unsure.

Sites: free time in Luxor. Meals: breakfast. Night: not included, you are in the air.