Most people see in the New Year under a clock. This one is counted down in the shadow of a structure that was already two and a half thousand years old when Cleopatra was born.
This 4-day New Year in Cairo package puts you in Giza for the turn of the year, with a gala dinner on New Year’s Eve, three nights of hotel accommodation, and the two touring days that matter most: the Giza Plateau with Saqqara and Memphis, and the Grand Egyptian Museum with historic Cairo. Every excursion is private — your own licensed Egyptologist, your own vehicle, and a start time you set rather than one set for you.
That last point earns its keep over New Year more than at any other time of year. The Giza Plateau is at its busiest during the festive fortnight, and a private tour is what lets you be standing at the Sphinx early, while the coach groups are still queuing at the gate.
Two arrival dates are offered. Arrive on 30 December for a settling-in day before the celebrations, or arrive on 31 December and go straight to the gala. Both run four days and three nights, and both include the New Year’s Eve gala dinner in the price — never as a compulsory supplement added at the desk.
Egypt Best Vacations is a licensed Egyptian tour operator founded by a professional Egyptologist, and a TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice winner three years running 2024, 2025 and 2026 . Festive dates sell out earliest of any in the calendar — reserve early.
Your representative from Egypt Best Vacations meets you inside the arrivals terminal at Cairo International Airport, holding a signboard with your name. He assists you through the visa formalities and passport control, waits with you for your luggage, and walks you out to your private air-conditioned vehicle.
A private air-conditioned transfer takes you to your hotel for check-in. The rest of the day is deliberately unstructured: festive-season flights land at every hour, and a first evening with nothing to catch is worth more than a rushed excursion.
If you arrive with energy to spare, ask your guide about an evening at Khan El-Khalili — the medieval bazaar is at its best after dark, and a mint tea at a coffee house older than most European capitals is a good way to arrive properly.
Meals Included: None
An early start, because today is the reason you came. Your Egyptologist collects you after breakfast for the Great Pyramids of Giza — Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure — with time at the panoramic viewpoint where all three line up, and the option of going inside the Great Pyramid itself. Then down to the valley temple and the Great Sphinx, carved from a single outcrop of limestone and still refusing to explain itself.
Continue south to Saqqara, where the Step Pyramid of Djoser began the whole tradition — the first monumental stone building anywhere on earth, designed by Imhotep a century before Giza. Lunch at a local restaurant, then Memphis, capital of Egypt for over two thousand years and now a quiet open-air museum around a colossal recumbent Ramses II.
Back to the hotel in good time to rest and change. Tonight is New Year’s Eve.
The New Year’s Eve gala dinner is included in your package — not an optional extra, and not a supplement charged at reception. Expect a full festive spread, live entertainment, and a countdown you will be able to describe accurately for the rest of your life.
Optional: entry inside the Great Pyramid
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Gala Dinner
A civilized start to the year: touring begins late morning, because nobody should be looking at a 4,500-year-old solar boat on four hours’ sleep.
The morning belongs to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest archaeological museum in the world and now the home of the complete Tutankhamun collection — all 5,000-plus objects displayed together for the first time since Carter lifted them out of the ground. Your guide will take you through the Grand Staircase and the Tutankhamun galleries.
The afternoon turns to older Cairo: the Salah El-Din Citadel on its limestone spur, with the alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali and a view across the whole city to the Pyramids on a clear day. Savor your lunch at a local restaurant, the finish among the lanes of Khan El-Khalili, where the coppersmiths and spice merchants have been trading since the fourteenth century.
Optional: dinner cruise on the Nile with live entertainment.
Meals Included: Breakfast & Lunch
Breakfast at the hotel, then check-out and a private transfer to Cairo International Airport for your onward flight.
If your flight leaves late, there is time for one more thing — the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, Coptic Cairo, or a first look at Alexandria. Ask us and we will fit it around your departure time.
Optional: half-day extension before your flight · extra nights in Cairo.
Meals Included: Breakfast
Your Egypt Best Vacations representative meets you inside the arrivals terminal at Cairo International Airport with a signboard bearing your name, assists you through visa and passport formalities, and sees you out to a private air-conditioned vehicle for the transfer to your hotel.
Check in, unpack, and take the afternoon at your own speed — the pool, the terrace, or simply sleeping off the flight. There is no touring today by design: tonight is the main event, and arriving at it exhausted would be a waste of it.
The New Year’s Eve gala dinner is included in your package — a full festive dinner with live entertainment and the countdown itself, with the Pyramids a few minutes away rather than a photograph on the wall. No supplement, no optional upgrade at the desk.
Meals Included: Gala Dinner
A merciful start time to open the year — your guide collects you late morning, and the touring runs at whatever pace the previous night has left you with. That flexibility is the advantage of a private tour on the first of January.
Begin at the Great Pyramids of Giza, standing beside Khufu’s twenty-three-storey wall of limestone before moving to the panoramic point where all three pyramids align. Then the valley temple and the Great Sphinx, which has been staring due east at the sunrise for some forty-five centuries.
Continue to Saqqara and the Step Pyramid of Djoser, the prototype from which everything at Giza descends. Lunch at a local restaurant, then finish at Memphis, the old capital, where a fallen colossus of Ramses II lies under cover exactly where it was found.
Optional: entry inside the Great Pyramid
Meals Included: Breakfast & Lunch
The Grand Egyptian Museum fills the morning. It is the largest archaeological museum on earth, purpose-built within sight of the Pyramids, and it holds the entire Tutankhamun collection in one place for the first time in a century. Allow real time for the Grand Staircase.
After lunch, the Salah El-Din Citadel and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, whose alabaster walls and Ottoman domes look out over the rooftops of the old city. Lunch at a local restaurant, then close the day in Khan El-Khalili, haggling gently for something you did not know you needed.
Optional: dinner cruise on the Nile with live entertainment.
Meals Included: Breakfast & Lunch
A final breakfast, check-out, and a private transfer to Cairo International Airport in good time for your flight.
Flying late? We can add the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, Coptic Cairo, or a day trip to Alexandria before you go — just tell us your departure time.
Optional: half-day extension before your flight · extra nights in Cairo.
Meals Included: Breakfast
The gala dinner is included in the price of this tour on both arrival dates. It is not an optional extra and it is not billed as a festive supplement when you check in — a practice common enough in Egypt over New Year that it is worth saying plainly.
Expect a full festive menu, live entertainment, and the countdown itself. Dress is smart. Tables for the gala are assigned by the hotel, and if you are travelling as a group or celebrating something in particular, tell us when you book and we will pass it on in advance.
