Most nine-day Egypt itineraries give you Cairo, Luxor and Aswan. This one adds Alexandria: a full day on the Mediterranean coast among Greco-Roman catacombs, a Roman triumphal column, and a fortress built from the rubble of the Pharos lighthouse. The result is a Cairo, Alexandria and Nile cruise itinerary that covers three distinct chapters of Egyptian history rather than one.
Five nights in Cairo and three sailing from Aswan down to Luxor. You fly between them rather than drive, so the long distances cost you an hour in the air instead of a day on the road. The group is capped at sixteen, and every touring day is led by a licensed Egyptologist rather than a driver working from a script.
One thing worth knowing before you book: Alexandria day is roughly three hours by road each way from Cairo, which makes Day 4 the earliest start and the latest finish of the trip. It is worth doing — but go in knowing what you have signed up for.
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. Transfer to your hotel. The rest of the day is yours.
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 ancient wonders 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. 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 have never been on public view before.
Overnight: Cairo
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
After breakfast, the Citadel of Saladin, begun in 1176 to defend Cairo against Crusader attack, and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali standing at its centre. Then down into Coptic Cairo for the Hanging Church, the Church of Abu Serga and the Ben Ezra Synagogue — three faiths within a few hundred metres of each other. Finish in Khan El-Khalili, Cairo’s great medieval bazaar, open since the fourteenth century.
Overnight: Cairo
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
A long day, and worth it: roughly three hours by road in each direction.
The Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa first — a second-century tomb cut three levels down into the rock, where Egyptian, Greek and Roman funerary styles sit side by side in the same burial chamber. Then Pompey’s Pillar, a Roman triumphal column raised for the emperor Diocletian around 298 CE and misattributed to Pompey by later travellers 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 as a tribute to the ancient one, which had been gone for well over a thousand years by then. Return to Cairo in the evening.
Overnight: Cairo
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
Transfer to Cairo Airport for the short flight to Aswan, where your guide meets you.
The High Dam first, one of the great engineering projects of the 1960s and the reason the next site had to be moved. The Temple of Isis at Philae was dismantled block by block and rebuilt on higher ground as Lake Nasser rose behind the dam — you reach it by boat. Finish at the Unfinished Obelisk, still lying in the granite quarry where it cracked before it could be raised. Board your cruise ship.
Overnight: Aboard, moored at Aswan
Optional tour: Tour to the Nubian Village in Aswan
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
A free morning aboard, or take the optional excursion to Abu Simbel — a pre-dawn start and around three hours each way by road, returning in time to sail.
The ship leaves for Kom Ombo around midday. Kom Ombo is unusual: a double temple split down its axis, the southern half for Sobek the crocodile god and the northern half for Haroeris, Horus the Elder. Two entrances, two sanctuaries, two of everything. The small Crocodile Museum beside it holds mummified crocodiles found nearby. Sail on to Edfu.
Overnight: Aboard at Edfu
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Horse and carriage to the Temple of Horus at Edfu before breakfast. Edfu is the most completely preserved temple in Egypt — roof intact, walls covered inside and out with the inscriptions that tell us how the rituals were actually performed.
Back aboard to sail north through the Esna lock to Luxor. In the afternoon, Karnak: the largest religious complex ever built, added to by pharaoh after pharaoh across roughly two thousand years. Then Luxor Temple, connected to Karnak by the avenue of sphinxes.
Overnight: Aboard at Luxor
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
Disembark after breakfast and cross to the west bank.
The Valley of the Kings, burial ground of the pharaohs of the Eighteenth to Twentieth Dynasties, where the tombs were cut deep into the rock in the hope that hiding them would keep them safe. Then the terraced mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, built into the cliff face for the woman who ruled as pharaoh for around twenty years. A photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon — all that stands above ground of what was once the largest mortuary temple in Egypt. Fly to Cairo in the evening.
Overnight: Cairo
Optional tour: Sunrise Hot Air Balloon over Luxor
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
Transfer to Cairo International Airport for your onward flight.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
