9 Days Luxury Cairo & Nile Tour – Ultimate Experience

Our representative meets you in the arrival hall of Cairo International Airport, holding a sign with your name, and helps you through to your private air-conditioned vehicle. The drive to your hotel takes 30 to 60 minutes, depending on traffic and on where the hotel is.

On the way or at check-in, your tour leader goes through the plan for the days ahead: the pick-up time tomorrow, the timing of the flight to Aswan on Day 3, and the documents you need for the cruise.

Good to know

No meals are included today. After a long flight, the hotel restaurant is the easiest choice; keep the evening light, as Day 2 is a full day out.

Morning: the Grand Egyptian Museum

Your Egyptologist meets you at the hotel after breakfast, at about 8:30. The Grand Egyptian Museum stands about 2 km from the pyramids. You enter through the Grand Hall with its colossal statue of Ramses II, climb the Grand Staircase lined with royal statues, and spend most of the visit in the Tutankhamun galleries, where the objects from the young king's tomb are shown together for the first time. The museum is very large, so your guide picks a route through the key pieces in two and a half to three hours.

Late morning: the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx

From the museum you drive up to the Giza Plateau. The three main pyramids were built for the Fourth Dynasty kings Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure about 4,500 years ago; the Great Pyramid of Khufu is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing. Your guide explains how they were built and how the plateau worked as a royal cemetery, with causeways, temples and the tombs of officials around them. The programme includes a short camel ride near the pyramids. Going inside the Great Pyramid needs a separate ticket bought at the site.

Below the pyramids you see the Great Sphinx and the Valley Temple of Khafre, built of huge granite blocks, where the king's funeral rites began.

Afternoon: lunch and Khan el-Khalili

Lunch is at a local restaurant, at about 2 pm. In the late afternoon you drive across the city to historic Islamic Cairo and Khan el-Khalili, a market since the late 14th century, with narrow lanes of lamps, spices, silver and fabric. There is time to walk, shop or sit for a mint tea before you return to the hotel at about 7 pm.

Morning: flight to Aswan

After an early breakfast you check out and transfer to Cairo airport for the domestic flight to Aswan, about 1 hour 20 minutes. Your guide meets you on arrival, and your luggage goes to the ship while you visit the sites.

Midday: the High Dam and Philae Temple

• The High Dam, completed in 1970, which ended the yearly Nile flood, gave Egypt a steady supply of water and electricity, and created Lake Nasser behind it.
• Philae Temple, the temple of the goddess Isis, reached by a short motorboat ride across the reservoir. The temple was moved stone by stone to Agilkia Island in the 1970s, in a UNESCO campaign, to save it from the rising water between the old and new dams. Your guide tells the story of Isis and Osiris, which is carved on its walls.

Afternoon: on board and the temple of Kom Ombo

You board the ship for lunch, and the ship sails north to Kom Ombo. Kom Ombo is a double temple from the Ptolemaic period, with two entrances and two sanctuaries side by side, one for Sobek, the crocodile god, and one for Haroeris, Horus the Elder. Look for the relief often read as a set of medical instruments, and the Nilometer once used to measure the height of the river. The small Crocodile Museum next to the temple shows mummified crocodiles from a nearby cemetery.

Evening

Dinner is on board while the ship continues towards Edfu, where you spend the night. The exact order of the visits on the cruise depends on the ship's sailing schedule for your date; your guide confirms it on board.

Morning: the Temple of Horus at Edfu

After breakfast you visit Edfu's Temple of Horus, built between 237 and 57 BC and the most complete temple in Egypt: its pylon, roofed halls and granite shrine still stand much as they were built. The ride from the river to the temple is usually by horse carriage. Your guide reads with you the reliefs of the battle between Horus and Seth, the myth the temple was built around.

Afternoon: sailing to Luxor

Lunch is served on board while the ship sails north past fields, palm groves and mud-brick villages. At Esna the ship passes through the lock, which many travelers watch from the deck. This is the quietest afternoon of the trip, for the pool, the sun deck or a book.

Evening

The ship reaches Luxor in the evening. Dinner is on board, and you spend the night on the ship, moored on the East Bank.

Early morning: the Valley of the Kings

The West Bank visit starts early, to see the tombs before the heat and the crowds. The Valley of the Kings holds more than 60 tombs cut into the hills for the pharaohs of the New Kingdom, from the 18th to the 20th Dynasty. The standard ticket opens three tombs among those open on the day; the tomb of Tutankhamun needs a separate ticket bought at the site. Inside, the painted corridors show the king's journey through the underworld, in colours that are still bright after more than 3,000 years. Our guide to the best tombs in the Valley of the Kings helps you choose.

Late morning: the temple of Hatshepsut

At Deir el-Bahari, the temple of Queen Hatshepsut rises in three terraces against the limestone cliffs. She ruled as pharaoh for about two decades, and the reliefs here record her trading expedition to the land of Punt.

Midday: the Colossi of Memnon

On the way back you stop at the Colossi of Memnon, two seated statues of Amenhotep III, each about 18 metres tall, that once stood at the entrance of his mortuary temple.

Afternoon and evening

Lunch is back on the ship and the afternoon is free. Your last dinner on board is followed by the night on the ship in Luxor.

Sunrise: optional balloon flight

If you would like to see the West Bank from the air, a hot-air balloon flight at sunrise is an optional extra this morning. The pick-up is before dawn and the flight lasts about 45 minutes, over the fields, the temples and the hills of the Theban necropolis. Flights depend on the wind on the day. Read whether a balloon ride in Luxor is worth it before you decide.

Morning: check-out

After breakfast you leave the ship. If your flight leaves in the afternoon, Karnak and Luxor Temple on the East Bank can be added as an optional visit; ask us when you book, so the flight time is chosen for it.

Afternoon: flight to Cairo

You transfer to Luxor airport for the flight to Cairo, about one hour. Our representative meets you on arrival and drives you to your hotel. The evening is free.

Morning: the road to Alexandria and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina

After breakfast you check out and drive north with your guide on the desert road to Alexandria, about 220 km and three hours. Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC and was the capital of Egypt under the Ptolemies for three centuries. Your first stop is the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, opened in 2002 near the site of the ancient Library of Alexandria. Its tilted round roof faces the sea, and the walls outside are carved with letters from scripts of the world. Inside you see the great reading hall and, when they are open on the day, the museums of the library, including its antiquities and manuscripts collections.

Afternoon: the Citadel of Qaitbay and the corniche

• The Citadel of Qaitbay, a fortress built by Sultan Qaitbay in the 1470s on the site of the Pharos, the lighthouse of Alexandria that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Stones from the fallen lighthouse are believed to be in its walls.
• The mosque of Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi, built over the tomb of a 13th-century Andalusian Sufi saint, with its tall minaret and domes facing the eastern harbour.
• The gardens of Montaza, the park around the summer palace of Egypt's last royal family, with views over a quiet bay.
• A drive along the corniche, past the statue of Alexander the Great, the Unknown Soldier Memorial and the Stanley Bridge.

Lunch is at a local restaurant on the way.

Evening: the old town and a seafood dinner

The day ends in the older streets near the harbour and with dinner at a seafood restaurant by the sea, where you usually choose your fish by weight. You spend the night at a hotel in Alexandria. Our article on what to see in one day in Alexandria has more ideas.

Morning: Alexandria to Cairo

After breakfast you drive back to Cairo in your private vehicle, about three hours. Lunch is included on the way or on arrival, and you check in to your hotel in the early afternoon.

Afternoon: free, or an optional visit

The rest of the day is yours. If you would like one more ancient site, this optional half day, at extra cost, works well from Cairo:

• Saqqara, with the Step Pyramid of Djoser, designed by Imhotep around 2650 BC and the earliest large stone building in Egypt.
• Memphis, the first capital of Egypt, with the colossal statue of Ramses II in its open-air museum.
• Dahshur, with the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid of Sneferu, the experiments that led to the smooth-sided pyramids of Giza.

Evening

For a last evening in Cairo, a dinner cruise on the Nile with music and a tanoura show is an optional extra; or go back to Khan el-Khalili for the cafés at night. Settle the time of tomorrow's airport transfer with our representative.

After breakfast, our representative drives you to Cairo International Airport in time for your international flight; airlines usually ask you to be at the airport three hours before departure. This is the end of the tour.

If your flight leaves late in the day, ask us when you book about extra sightseeing, such as the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization with the Royal Mummies Hall, which is an optional extra.