This 10 day Egypt tour with Nile cruise fits three different Egypts into one trip. You spend four nights in Cairo for the Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx and the Grand Egyptian Museum. Then you sail the Nile for three nights from Aswan to Luxor, and finish with two all-inclusive nights on the Red Sea in Hurghada. Domestic flights link every leg, so no day is lost to long road transfers. Prices start from $1,525 per person.
The cruise does the heavy lifting: Philae Temple on Agilkia Island and the High Dam in Aswan, Kom Ombo and the Crocodile Museum, the Temple of Horus at Edfu, then Karnak and Luxor Temple. On the last morning you cross to the West Bank for the Valley of the Kings, the Temple of Hatshepsut and the Colossi of Memnon, and you fly to Hurghada that same day.
Six days of temples, tombs and early starts are the best of Egypt, and they are also tiring. That is why the route runs Cairo first, then the Nile, and saves Hurghada for the end. You fly from Luxor straight to the coast, and day 8 is completely free, with no alarm clock. You get all-inclusive meals, the Red Sea for swimming and snorkelling, and optional boat trips if you want them. On day 9 you fly back to Cairo for your last night, so your international flight home leaves without a long transfer.
Egypt Best Vacations is a licensed Egyptian tour operator based in Luxor, run by a working Egyptologist. Your itinerary is built by someone who has spent his career in these temples — which is why the day-by-day tells you which tombs are worth your three choices in the Valley of the Kings, and why Edfu is visited before breakfast.
We have held the TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice Award three years running: 2024, 2025 and 2026. Prices start from $1,525 per person sharing, in two accommodation tiers, and every element can be adjusted — hotel category, cruise ship, extra nights, or Abu Simbel from Aswan. Want one more day? Our 11 day Egypt tour with Nile cruise gives Cairo two full sightseeing days before the cruise.
Your representative meets you inside the arrivals hall at Cairo International, before passport control, holding a sign with your name. If you need a visa on arrival, he buys it for you while you wait — it’s quicker than queueing yourself. Transfer to your hotel is about 45 minutes, longer if you land during evening rush. Nothing is scheduled today.
Meals: No Meals Included
An early start, and deliberately so. Your guide collects you at 8am, because the Giza Plateau is at its best in the first two hours and hardest work after eleven.
You’ll see all three pyramids — Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure — from the plateau, then the panoramic point where the whole line stands together, then down to the Sphinx and the Valley Temple beside it. Khufu’s is the only survivor of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the questions people ask most are how it was built and why. Your guide will answer both properly; this is the part of the day worth slowing down for.
Going inside the Great Pyramid is not included and needs a separate ticket. Be honest with yourself about it: the passage is steep, low and hot, there is nothing decorated to see at the top, and if you have any trouble with confined spaces you should skip it. Plenty of people do.
Lunch at a local restaurant, then the Grand Egyptian Museum, ten minutes away. The complete Tutankhamun collection is here now — more than 5,000 objects from the tomb displayed together for the first time since Carter cleared it. Allow the grand staircase time; the sightline it opens onto the pyramids at the top is the best-designed moment in the building.
Meals: Breakfast & Lunch
The Citadel of Saladin first, begun in 1176 to hold the city against the Crusaders. Inside it stands the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, faced in alabaster and finished in the 1840s — Ottoman in style rather than Egyptian, which surprises people. The terrace outside gives you the whole city, and on a clear morning the pyramids on the horizon.
Then down to Coptic Cairo, built on the walls of the Roman fortress of Babylon. The Hanging Church takes its name from its position — suspended over a Roman gatehouse, with a section of glass floor to prove it. The Church of Abu Serga stands above a crypt where tradition holds the Holy Family sheltered during their time in Egypt. A few steps away, the Ben Ezra Synagogue, where a sealed storeroom gave up the Cairo Geniza: nearly 300,000 medieval manuscript fragments, and the single richest source we have for daily life in the medieval Mediterranean.
You finish at Khan el-Khalili, trading since 1382. Prices start high and are expected to be negotiated — that’s not a trap, it’s the convention. Take a coffee at El Fishawy, which has been open on and off for over two centuries.
Meals: Breakfast Only
A morning flight to Aswan, roughly an hour and twenty minutes. Your guide meets you outside arrivals.
You start at the High Dam, built through the 1960s to end the Nile’s annual flood and generate power for the country. It solved a great deal and cost a great deal — the reservoir behind it drowned Nubian villages and swallowed temples, and your guide will give you the full account rather than the brochure version.
Then Philae, and the temple you visit is not standing where it was built. The dams left the original island submerged for most of the year, so between 1972 and 1980 UNESCO cut the temple into more than 40,000 blocks and rebuilt it on higher ground at Agilkia. You reach it by motorboat. Sanctuary of Isis, and one of the last places in Egypt where the old religion was still practiced — the final hieroglyphic inscription anywhere dates from here, carved in 394 AD.
Last stop is the Unfinished Obelisk, still lying in the granite quarry where it cracked. Had it been raised it would have stood nearly 42 metres and weighed something over 1,000 tonnes — larger than any obelisk ever erected. Because it was abandoned mid-cut, you can see the working method exactly: the trenches, the tool marks, the point where the flaw appeared and the whole project stopped.
Board your ship in the afternoon. Overnight moored at Aswan.
Optional tour: Tour to Nubian Village in Aswan
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
If you want Abu Simbel, today is the day, and it means leaving around 4am for the three-hour drive south. It is a long morning and it is worth it — Ramses II’s temple carved into the cliff face, and moved block by block in the 1960s just as Philae was. This is an optional extra, not included.
If you stay aboard, the morning is yours. Sun deck, pool, the bank going past.
The ship sails around lunchtime for Kom Ombo, which sits right at the water’s edge — you walk off and you’re there. It’s a double temple, split precisely down the middle: Sobek the crocodile god on one side, Haroeris the falcon on the other, each with a matching entrance, hall and sanctuary. Nowhere else in Egypt was built this way. The Crocodile Museum next door holds mummified crocodiles recovered from the surrounding area.
Sail on to Edfu. Overnight moored there.
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Out before breakfast, by horse-drawn carriage through waking streets to the Temple of Horus. Early is deliberate: this is the best-preserved temple in Egypt and it is very different with a handful of people in it than with four coaches. Building began in 237 BC and ran 180 years. The walls carry the fullest surviving account we have of how a temple actually ran — the festivals, the ritual calendar, the daily service.
Back aboard and north through the Esna lock, which takes an hour or two depending on traffic. Watch from the deck if you can; small boats come alongside to trade with passengers, which is either charming or persistent, depending on your mood.
Arriving in Luxor, you visit Karnak — not one temple but a site added to for around 2,000 years. The Hypostyle Hall holds 134 columns, the tallest of them 21 metres, and photographs consistently fail to convey it.
Then Luxor Temple, and if the timing works, at dusk. It was joined to Karnak by an avenue of sphinxes nearly three kilometres long, excavated over decades and reopened in 2021. Look for the mosque built into the temple’s upper level, and the Christian frescoes painted over pharaonic reliefs in the chamber behind it — three religions in one building, none of them demolished for the next.
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Disembark after breakfast and cross to the west bank.
Your standard ticket to the Valley of the Kings admits you to three tombs of your choosing, and the choice matters more than people expect — they vary enormously in decoration and in how much climbing they involve. Your guide will steer you, and being flexible helps, because the rotation of which tombs are open changes. Seti I, Tutankhamun and Ramses V/VI each require a separate ticket.
Then Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari, terraced into the cliff by her architect Senenmut. She ruled as pharaoh for around two decades, and after her death her successor set about erasing her name from the monuments — which is why so many of the figures here have had their faces cut away.
Last, the Colossi of Memnon: two seated statues of Amenhotep III, all that’s easily visible of what was once the largest mortuary temple on the west bank. After an earthquake in 27 BC, one of them began producing a sound at dawn. Greek and Roman tourists travelled here specifically to hear it and carved their names on the legs while they waited. A Roman repair in the third century silenced it for good.
Then you travel on to Hurghada, arriving in the late afternoon or early evening. Check in, and the rest of the trip is yours.
Optional tour: Sunrise Hot Air Balloon over Luxor
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Nothing scheduled, and that’s the point of putting it here rather than mid-trip.
The Red Sea has some of the most accessible reef in the world — you can be in coral in ten minutes from the beach. Diving, snorkelling trips, glass-bottom boats, submarine tours and desert safaris can all be arranged; ask reception the evening before, as boats leave early. Or don’t. After six days of temples and early starts, a day doing nothing is a legitimate choice, and your hotel is all-inclusive.
Meals: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Transfer to Hurghada airport for the flight to Cairo, and on to your hotel for the final night. If you have last-minute shopping, this evening is your chance — hotel shops are pricier than Khan el-Khalili but very much easier.
Meals: Breakfast Only
Transfer to Cairo International, timed to your flight — allow three hours for international departures. Your representative sees you through check-in.
If you’re carrying anything that looks antique, keep the receipt accessible. Genuine antiquities cannot leave the country, and reproductions occasionally get questioned.
Meals: Breakfast Only
