Three faces of Egypt in five days, from one hotel bed. This private 5 day Cairo Alexandria and Luxor tour keeps you in the same Cairo hotel all four nights and takes you out to the rest of the country by day: pharaonic Giza and the Grand Egyptian Museum, Greco-Roman Alexandria on the Mediterranean, and ancient Thebes at Luxor by a morning flight and an evening one back. An Egyptologist guides every day, domestic flights and entrance fees are included, and prices start at $955 per person. It is the shortest itinerary we sell that covers all three cities without a single hotel change.
The logic of the tour is simple: Cairo is the hub, and each day is a spoke. Day two is Giza and the GEM, ten minutes from the plateau. Day three is Luxor, reached by flight and left on the last one, which gives you eight hours on the ground for the West Bank tombs and the East Bank temples. Day four is Alexandria by road, two and a half hours each way on the desert highway, for the Catacombs, Qaitbay and the Library. Day five is old Cairo before your flight. You unpack once. The days are long, but they are the right days, and the private vehicle and guide mean the pace is yours.
We run this same five-day route at three other levels. If price matters most, the 5 Day Egypt Budget Tour: Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor uses 4-star hotels from $705. If you want Diamond and Elite hotels, the 5 Day Luxury Cairo, Luxor and Alexandria Tour upgrades every night. And over the holidays the 5 Day Egypt Christmas Tour: Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor runs the route with festive-season departures. This page is the standard version: Gold and Platinum 5-star hotels, year-round departures, private throughout.
Your Cairo Alexandria Luxor tour begins gently. An Egypt Best Vacations representative is waiting inside Cairo International Airport to walk you through the visa counter and arrival formalities, and your private driver takes it from there. Settle into your 5-star hotel — your single home base for all five days — and spend the evening however the journey left you: dinner overlooking the Nile, or an early night. The pharaohs have waited four thousand years; they can wait until morning.
Meals Plan: No Meals Included
Day two opens with the sight that started it all. Your private Egyptologist collects you after breakfast and takes you to the Giza Plateau, where the Great Pyramids of Giza — Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure — rise from the desert edge exactly where they’ve stood for forty-five centuries. Because the tour is private, you linger where you want: the panoramic viewpoint for the classic photograph, the base of the Great Pyramid to feel the true size of its blocks, and the Sphinx, crouched in its ancient quarry with the whole plateau behind it. Going inside Khufu’s pyramid is possible as an optional extra — ask your guide.
After lunch at a local restaurant, ten minutes’ drive brings you to the Grand Egyptian Museum. Here the morning’s story continues indoors: colossal royal statues line the grand staircase, and the galleries hold Tutankhamun’s burial treasures in their entirety — mask, thrones, chariots — with the pyramids themselves visible through the windows. Return to your hotel with the two halves of ancient Egypt, tomb and treasure, connected in a single day.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
An early flight south turns Cairo into Thebes before the morning heat arrives. Your Luxor guide meets you at the airport, and the West Bank comes first: the Valley of the Kings, the hidden desert canyon where New Kingdom rulers traded pyramids for secrecy, cutting their tombs deep into the rock. More than 60 have been discovered; your guide will choose the three finest open today, their painted corridors still vivid after three millennia.
Next, the terraces of Hatshepsut Temple climb the cliffs of Deir el-Bahari in three great tiers — the masterpiece built for the woman who ruled Egypt as pharaoh for two decades. A photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon, the twin sentinels of Amenhotep III, closes the West Bank chapter.
After lunch at a local restaurant, cross to the East Bank for Karnak, one of the largest religious complexes ever built, where the Great Hypostyle Hall’s 134 columns swallow every visitor whole. End at Luxor Temple, joined to Karnak by the restored Avenue of Sphinxes — at its best as the afternoon light turns the sandstone gold. Then a short flight returns you to Cairo and your waiting driver. One day, one ancient capital, entirely yours.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
Today the desert gives way to the sea. Your private vehicle takes the road north through the Delta to Alexandria, the city Alexander the Great founded and Cleopatra ruled — a different Egypt in light, air, and accent.
Begin underground at the Catacombs of Kom El-Shoqafa, a three-level Roman-era necropolis rediscovered in 1900 — famously when a donkey vanished through the ground into the access shaft. Down the spiral stairway, Egyptian gods appear carved in Roman dress: nowhere else do the two worlds blend so strangely or so beautifully. Nearby stands Pompey’s Pillar, a single 27-meter column of red Aswan granite — misnamed by medieval travelers, actually raised for the emperor Diocletian around 298 AD, and the last standing remnant of the great Serapeum temple that once crowned this hill.
Then the sea itself: the Citadel of Qaitbay, the 15th-century fortress Sultan Qaitbay built on the exact site of the vanished Pharos Lighthouse, one ancient wonder standing on the footprint of another, with the Mediterranean breaking below its walls. Finish at the Library of Alexandria, where the striking granite disc of the modern Bibliotheca revives the most famous library in history. Lunch at a local restaurant — Alexandria’s seafood has its own reputation — then the road home to Cairo for your final night.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
Your last morning completes Egypt’s story. Start at the Citadel of Saladin, the great medieval stronghold on the Muqattam spur, where the alabaster-clad Mosque of Mohammed Ali dominates the skyline it has owned for nearly two centuries — and the ramparts hand you all of Cairo in one view.
Then descend into the lanes of Old Cairo, where the Hanging Church rests suspended atop the towers of a Roman fortress gate, its cedar ceiling built like an upturned ark. A few steps away, Abu Serga Church guards the crypt where tradition says the Holy Family sheltered on their journey through Egypt, and the Ben Ezra Synagogue preserves the memory of the Cairo Geniza, the medieval manuscript trove that rewrote what we know of the medieval world. Three faiths, three doors, one street.
The farewell belongs to Khan El-Khalili, Cairo’s great bazaar since the 14th century — brass, spices, silver, and a last mint tea in a café older than most countries. Then your driver takes you to Cairo Airport. Five days, four Egypts — pharaonic, Greek, Christian, Islamic — and one standing invitation to return.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
