9-Day Egypt Tour: Cairo, Alexandria, Nile Cruise & Luxor

After breakfast, your Egyptologist guide collects you and you head straight for Giza.

The Great Pyramid of Khufu, the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure, and the Great Sphinx — all in one plateau, all within a twenty-minute drive of a Cairo suburb, which is a fact that never stops being slightly absurd. You'll have time for the classic panorama shot, and if you'd like to go inside a pyramid, we'll arrange the ticket.

In the afternoon, the museum. Depending on your preference and current opening arrangements, we'll take you to the Grand Egyptian Museum.

Included: Guide, entrance fees, lunch, private transport
Overnight: Cairo

This is the day most Egypt tours in 9 days skip. We don't, and here's why.

Alexandria is a different country wearing Egypt's clothes. Founded by Alexander the Great, run by the Ptolemies, loved by the Romans, and still facing north toward Europe across a very blue Mediterranean.

You'll visit the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa — a Roman burial complex discovered when a donkey fell through the ground, which is the single best archaeological origin story in Egypt. Then Pompey's Pillar, the Citadel of Qaitbay built on the ruins of the ancient Lighthouse, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a strikingly modern building that honours the most famous library the world ever lost.

Seafood lunch on the corniche. Then the drive back to Cairo.

Yes, it's a long day. It's also the day people talk about most when they get home.

Overnight: Cairo

Morning transfer to Cairo airport for your flight to Aswan.

Aswan is where Egypt exhales. Granite islands, sailboats, and a slower rhythm than anywhere north of it. You'll see the High Dam, and the Temple of Philae, relocated island by island to save it from the water.

Late afternoon, you board your Nile cruise ship. Cabin, welcome drink, dinner on board, and your first evening watching the river go by.

Included: Flight, guide, entrance fees, cruise check-in, full board on cruise
Overnight: Nile cruise, Aswan

An early start.

But Abu Simbel is the reason. Four seated statues of Ramses II, each about twenty metres tall, carved into a cliff face near the Sudanese border — and then, in the 1960s, cut into more than a thousand blocks and reassembled sixty-five metres higher to save them from Lake Nasser. It remains one of the most extraordinary engineering rescues ever attempted.

Next door, the smaller temple Ramses built for Nefertari, one of very few Egyptian temples dedicated to a queen at near-equal scale.

Return to Aswan, back to the ship, and the cruise begins sailing north.

Overnight: Nile cruise

A gentler day. Sailing, sun deck, tea, and the Nile doing what it's done for several thousand years.

In the afternoon you dock at Kom Ombo, a temple with an unusual double layout — one half for Sobek the crocodile god, one half for Horus the falcon god. Perfectly symmetrical, and slightly funny when you realise it exists because two priesthoods refused to share.

The adjoining Crocodile Museum holds mummified crocodiles. Dozens of them. Children love it. Some adults do not.

Overnight: Nile cruise

Early morning at the Temple of Horus in Edfu — the best-preserved temple in Egypt, buried under sand for centuries, which is exactly why the carvings still look freshly cut.

The ship sails on to Luxor. In the afternoon, the Temple of Karnak: 200 acres, and the Great Hypostyle Hall with 134 columns so large that groups of people standing between them look like a rounding error.

Then Luxor Temple, ideally toward evening when the lighting turns the whole colonnade amber.

Overnight: Nile cruise, Luxor

Disembark after breakfast and cross to the West Bank — the side of the river where ancient Egyptians buried their dead.

• Valley of the Kings — rock-cut royal tombs with painted ceilings still holding their colour
• Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari — three terraces against a sheer cliff, and one of the most striking buildings in the ancient world
• Colossi of Memnon — two seated giants standing guard over an empty field

Lunch in Luxor. Then transfer to Luxor airport for your flight to Cairo, where our representative meets you and takes you to your hotel.

Overnight: Cairo

Breakfast, checkout, and a private transfer to Cairo International Airport with our representative to assist at check-in.

Nine days. Cairo, Alexandria, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Kom Ombo, Edfu, Luxor. And a phone full of photographs you'll spend the next month explaining to people.