This 5 day Cairo tour is built for travellers who want Cairo done properly without changing hotels. You stay four nights in one Cairo hotel, Gold (5-star standard) or Platinum (5-star deluxe), and go out each day with your own Egyptologist guide and driver: the Giza Pyramids and the Grand Egyptian Museum on day two, Coptic Cairo, the Citadel and Khan el-Khalili on day three, Alexandria on day four, and Saqqara, Memphis and Dahshur on the morning of day five before your flight. It is a private tour, so the pace is yours.
Five days is the honest minimum for Cairo. Most short packages give the pyramids a morning and the museum an afternoon and call it done. This one adds the three sites that explain where the pyramids came from: the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, the first stone pyramid ever built around 2650 BC; the Bent and Red Pyramids of Sneferu at Dahshur, where the true pyramid shape was worked out a generation before Giza; and the ruins of Memphis, the capital they all served. Seen in that order, on the last morning, Giza makes sense.
The Grand Egyptian Museum is the other reason to give Cairo five days. Since its opening it holds the complete Tutankhamun collection under one roof for the first time, alongside the colossus of Ramesses II in the atrium, the Grand Staircase of royal statuary, and Khufu’s cedar solar boat. A guided afternoon there, straight after the pyramids, is the centrepiece of day two.
What you do not get: Luxor or a Nile cruise. If you want the pyramids and Luxor in one trip, see our 5 day Cairo Luxor and Aswan tour. If you want to stay in Cairo but swap Alexandria’s Roman sites for the World War II battlefield at El Alamein, see the 5 day Cairo, Alexandria and Alamein tour.
Your Egypt Best Vacations representative meets you inside the arrivals terminal at Cairo International Airport, helps with the visa and passport formalities, and drives you to your hotel. The rest of the day is free. If you arrive early, ask your guide about a first evening at Al-Azhar Park or a felucca on the Nile. Overnight in Cairo.
Meals: none
After breakfast your Egyptologist takes you to the Giza plateau: the Great Pyramid of Khufu, still 138 metres high after 4,500 years, the pyramid of Khafre with its surviving cap of casing stone, the smaller pyramid of Menkaure, and the panoramic viewpoint where all nine pyramids of the plateau line up. Then down to the Sphinx and the Valley Temple of Khafre, whose granite hall is one of the oldest standing buildings in Egypt. Going inside the Great Pyramid is optional (separate ticket).
Lunch at a local restaurant, then the afternoon at the Grand Egyptian Museum, a few minutes from the plateau: the colossus of Ramesses II in the atrium, the Grand Staircase, the Tutankhamun galleries with the golden mask and the complete tomb contents, and Khufu’s 4,500-year-old cedar boat. Overnight in Cairo.
Meals: breakfast, lunch
Begin at the Citadel of Saladin, begun in 1176 on a spur of the Mokattam hills and the seat of Egypt’s rulers for nearly 700 years. Inside, the Alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali (1830–1848) has the best view over the city, on a clear day to the pyramids. Then to Coptic Cairo, the walled quarter that grew inside the Roman fortress of Babylon: the Hanging Church, built over the fortress gate; the church of Abu Serga, whose crypt is held by tradition to be where the Holy Family sheltered; and the Ben Ezra Synagogue, where the Cairo Geniza documents were found.
Finish in Khan el-Khalili, the bazaar founded in 1382, with time to shop and a coffee at El Fishawy. Overnight in Cairo.
Meals: breakfast
An early start for the drive north to Alexandria (about 220 km, 2.5 to 3 hours) with your guide. The Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, cut three levels deep in the 2nd century AD, mix Egyptian gods with Roman togas in a way you will see nowhere else. Pompey’s Pillar, 27 metres of red Aswan granite, is what remains of the Serapeum, the temple that held part of the ancient Library. Lunch by the sea, then the Citadel of Qaitbay (1477) on the site of the Pharos lighthouse, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern library opened in 2002 on the ancient one’s shoreline. Drive back to Cairo in the evening. Overnight in Cairo.
Meals: breakfast, lunch
Check out after breakfast. At Saqqara your Egyptologist walks you through the Step Pyramid complex of Djoser, designed by Imhotep around 2650 BC, and one of the painted Old Kingdom tombs of the nobles. At Memphis, the open-air museum holds the fallen limestone colossus of Ramesses II and the alabaster sphinx. At Dahshur you see the two pyramids of Sneferu, Khufu’s father: the Bent Pyramid, whose angle was changed halfway up, and the Red Pyramid, the first true pyramid, which you can enter. Then to Cairo International Airport for your flight home, and your 5 day Cairo tour ends.
Meals: breakfast
Shorter on time? Our 4 day Cairo tour keeps the pyramids, the museum and Coptic Cairo and drops Alexandria. Want Alexandria and El Alamein instead of Saqqara and Dahshur? See the 5 day Cairo, Alexandria and Alamein tour. Want the pyramids and the Nile? The 5 day Cairo Luxor and Aswan tour flies you south after the pyramids. All our Cairo day tours can be added to any of these.
