Christmas in Egypt is not the Christmas you left behind, and that is rather the point. Cairo in late December sits around 20°C, dry and bright — shirt-sleeve weather on the Giza plateau while home is dark by four in the afternoon. This 5 day Egypt Christmas tour puts the Pyramids, Alexandria and Luxor into the holiday week, with your own guide, driver and vehicle from arrival to departure.
Egypt does mark Christmas, and it marks it twice. The Coptic Orthodox Church — the largest Christian community in the Middle East — celebrates on 7 January, and Coptic Cairo fills in the days before it. Hotels and international restaurants mark 25 December for foreign visitors. Travel around either date and you land in a country observing the season rather than ignoring it.
Your hotel’s festive gala dinner is included in the price you book at. That is worth reading twice. Nearly every hotel in Egypt makes the gala compulsory over Christmas and New Year and adds it to your bill at check-in whether you attend or not — and nearly every operator lets you find that out on arrival. Ours is in the tour price.
Two things to plan around. Day 4 is long, you fly to Luxor in the morning, cover both banks of the river, and fly back to Cairo that evening. And the last week of December is the busiest of Egypt’s year, so the Valley of the Kings and the Giza plateau will not be quiet. Booking early matters more for this tour than for anything else we run. Travelling outside the holidays? The year-round 5 day Cairo Alexandria and Luxor tour follows the same itinerary with departures every day.
Your Egypt Best Vacations representative meets you inside the arrivals hall at Cairo International Airport with a signboard and helps you through visa and passport formalities. Private transfer to your hotel. The rest of the day is yours to settle in.
Overnight: Cairo
Meals Plan: No Meals Included
Your guide collects you after breakfast for the Giza plateau: the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, and the Great Sphinx. Khufu’s is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still standing, and your Egyptologist will take you through how it was built and why.
Lunch at a local restaurant, then the Grand Egyptian Museum, a few minutes from the plateau. The full Tutankhamun collection is displayed here together for the first time since Howard Carter cleared the tomb — over five thousand objects, most of which had never been on public view before. Be warned that you could spend a full day inside and still not see all of it; your guide will steer you to what matters.
Overnight: Cairo
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
A long day on the Mediterranean coast — roughly three hours by road each way.
The Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa first: a second-century tomb cut three levels into the rock, where Egyptian, Greek and Roman funerary styles sit side by side in the same chamber. Then Pompey’s Pillar, a Roman triumphal column raised for the emperor Diocletian around 298 CE and misattributed to Pompey by later travelers who got the story wrong. On to the Citadel of Qaitbay, built in the 1480s on the site of the Pharos lighthouse and partly from its fallen stone.
Lunch on the seafront, then the Bibliotheca Alexandrina — the modern library opened in 2002 in tribute to the ancient one. Return to Cairo in the evening.
Overnight: Cairo
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
An early flight to Luxor, where your guide meets you. This is the fullest day of the trip.
The west bank first: the Valley of the Kings, burial ground of the pharaohs of the Eighteenth to Twentieth Dynasties, cut deep into the rock in the hope that hiding the tombs would keep them safe. Then Hatshepsut’s terraced mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari, built into the cliff face for one of the few women to rule Egypt as pharaoh in her own right, and a photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon.
Lunch, then across to the east bank for Karnak — the largest religious complex ever built, added to across roughly two thousand years — and Luxor Temple, joined to it by the avenue of sphinxes. Evening flight back to Cairo and transfer to your hotel.
Overnight: Cairo
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
Begin in Coptic Cairo, the oldest Christian quarter in the country and the reason this itinerary belongs in the Christmas season. The Church of Abu Serga is built over the crypt where the Holy Family is said to have sheltered during the Flight into Egypt. The Hanging Church stands on the gatehouse of the Roman fortress of Babylon, its nave suspended over the old gate towers. The Ben Ezra Synagogue sits a hundred metres away — three faiths inside a few hundred metres of each other.
Then the Citadel of Saladin, begun in 1176 to defend Cairo against Crusader attack, and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali at its centre: the Alabaster Mosque, faced in the stone that gives it its name, with the best view over the city from its terrace.
Lunch, then Khan El-Khalili, Cairo’s great medieval bazaar, trading since the fourteenth century. Transfer to Cairo International Airport for your onward flight.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
Cairo Hotels: Safir Hotel, Sonesta Hotel, Ramses Hilton, Holiday Inn Citystars and more of the similar category.
| Room | Price per person |
|---|---|
| Triple | $1,250 |
| Twin | $1,350 |
| Single | $2,295 |
Cairo Hotels: Hilton Nile Tower, Concord El-Salam, Hilton Heliopolis, Tolip Family Park and more of the similar category.
| Room | Price per person |
|---|---|
| Triple | $1,450 |
| Twin | $1,600 |
| Single | $2,720 |
