This private 4 day Cairo slow travel tour is built on one simple rule: one great site a day, and all the time you need for it. Instead of the usual Cairo rush of Pyramids, museum, mosque and bazaar before dark, you spend a whole unhurried morning on the Giza Plateau, a full day with Tutankhamun at the Grand Egyptian Museum, and the afternoons are yours. Your own Egyptologist guide, driver and car, three nights in a Diamond or Elite hotel on half board and nine meals are included, from $1,275 per person in a triple room.
Most visitors see Giza in two hours. They arrive with the coaches, take the panorama photo, walk past the Sphinx and leave for the next stop. On a slow tour you reach the plateau early, when it is cool and quiet, and stay: you walk the full length of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, stand inside the granite Valley Temple of Khafre beside the Sphinx, and sit at the panorama point while your guide explains how 2.3 million blocks went up in about twenty years. Lunch is long, and the afternoon is free to rest, swim or sit by the Nile.
The museum gets the same treatment. The Grand Egyptian Museum is far too big for a quick visit, so you spend the day there, with a break for lunch, starting with the colossal statues of the Grand Staircase and ending in the Tutankhamun galleries, where the whole contents of his tomb are shown together. Day four leaves time for a slow breakfast and lunch before your flight. It is Cairo for travellers who would rather see two places properly than eight places badly.
If you have a little longer, our other slow tours keep the same pace: the 5 Day Cairo & Alexandria Slow Travel Tour adds a day by the Mediterranean, from $1,450, and the 5 Day Cairo & Luxor Slow Travel Experience adds the temples of Luxor, from $1,650. If you would rather see more of Cairo in four days, the 4 Day Luxury Cairo Tour covers more sites, from $1,140. All our unhurried itineraries are in Explore Egypt Slowly.
Your representative meets you inside the arrivals hall at Cairo International Airport with a signboard and helps you through the visa counter and passport control. Your private driver takes you to your hotel. There is nothing to rush for: settle in, and have dinner at the hotel.
Meals: dinner
Your Egyptologist guide collects you early, so you reach the Giza Plateau as the gates open and before the tour coaches. You walk around the base of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing, then on to the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure. At the panorama point your guide explains how they were built and who built them: a paid workforce whose town and bakeries archaeologists have excavated just south of the plateau. Below, you stand inside the granite Valley Temple of Khafre and in front of the Sphinx. A camel ride or a visit inside the Great Pyramid can be added on the spot.
Lunch is at a local restaurant, without hurry. The afternoon is free: rest at your hotel, or ask your guide to arrange a sunset felucca on the Nile or an evening in the Khan el-Khalili bazaar. Dinner at the hotel.
Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner
Today belongs to the largest archaeological museum in the world. At the Grand Egyptian Museum your guide starts in the atrium with the colossal statue of Ramesses II, climbs the Grand Staircase lined with the statues of kings, and works through the galleries at your pace. After lunch you spend the afternoon in the Tutankhamun galleries, where everything found in his tomb is shown together for the first time: the gold mask, the coffins, the shrines, his chariots and the small objects of his daily life. Through the museum’s windows, the Pyramids you visited yesterday are on the horizon. Back to your hotel for dinner.
Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner
Enjoy a late breakfast and a last morning at your own pace. After lunch at a local restaurant, your private driver takes you to Cairo Airport for your flight home.
Meals: breakfast and lunch
