Egypt in 8 Days: Pyramids, Temples and the Nile, All on Black Friday Offer

In short:

a full day on the Giza Plateau — Great Pyramids, Sphinx, Valley Temple — then lunch and the Grand Egyptian Museum. Overnight in Cairo.

Breakfast first, then your private guide takes you straight to the Giza Plateau. You start with the Great Pyramids of Giza, the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing. Your guide explains how they were built and, more interestingly, what the arguments still are about how they were built.

A short walk away sit the Sphinx and the Valley Temple, where the limestone blocks are so large that the engineering question starts all over again.

Lunch is at a local Egyptian restaurant — real food, not a tourist buffet — before you move on to the Grand Egyptian Museum, about 2 km from the pyramids themselves. It is the largest museum in the world built for a single civilisation.

Please note: the GEM Complex is currently open on limited access while the site is tested ahead of its official opening. Entry covers the Main Galleries, the Grand Hall, the Grand Staircase, the commercial area and the outdoor gardens.
Meals: breakfast, lunch · Overnight: Mövenpick Media City, Cairo

In short:

a one-hour flight to Luxor, check in to your 5-star cruise ship, then Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple. First night on board.

Early breakfast, then your guide drives you to Cairo Airport for the flight south to Luxor. Our representative meets you on arrival and checks you into your Nile cruise ship, which is where you will sleep for the next four nights.

Then straight to Karnak Temple, the largest religious site ever built in the ancient world. The Great Hypostyle Hall alone holds 134 stone columns, some of them as wide as a small room. Pharaoh after pharaoh added to this place for 2,000 years, and you get free time to wander the parts that interest you most.

From there you move to Luxor Temple, built by Amenhotep III and finished by Ramses II, right in the middle of the modern town.

Worth doing in the evening: the optional Sound and Light show at Karnak, which tells the story of Luxor and Karnak after dark, when the columns are lit and the crowds have gone.
Meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner · Overnight: on board the Nile cruise in Luxor

In short:

Colossi of Memnon, Temple of Hatshepsut and three tombs in the Valley of the Kings, then the ship sails for Edfu. Overnight on board.

Breakfast on board, then you cross to the West Bank of the Nile — ancient Thebes, and one of the most important archaeological sites anywhere in the world.

You stop first at the Colossi of Memnon, two seated statues of Amenhotep III that have been sitting in the same field for 3,400 years. Next is the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, cut in terraces into a sheer cliff face. Its walls tell the story of Hatshepsut's trading expedition to the land of Punt — a place nobody has conclusively located since.

Then the Valley of the Kings, where you go inside three rock-cut tombs. The colours on the walls are 3,000 years old and still bright; the scenes come from the Book of the Underworld, the map the pharaohs took with them. The busiest tombs have walkways, lighting and glass over the painted walls.

The ship sails for Edfu, via Esna, and dinner is served on board.

Please note: the three tombs you visit are chosen by the Egyptian Government and rotated through the year to protect them from the number of visitors, so they cannot be confirmed before you arrive. The tombs of Tutankhamun, Seti I and Ramses VI carry a separate entrance fee.
Meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner · Overnight: on board, sailing to Edfu

In short:

the double temple of Kom Ombo in the morning, the Temple of Horus at Edfu in the afternoon, then sailing on to Aswan. Overnight on board.

Breakfast on board, then you sail to Kom Ombo Temple. This is the only temple in Egypt built as a mirror image of itself, because it serves two gods at once: Sobek, the crocodile god of fertility, on one side, and Horus the falcon-headed sky god on the other. One wall is carved with surgical instruments — scalpels, forceps, bone saws — which makes it one of the earliest medical records we have.

In the afternoon you reach the Temple of Horus at Edfu, the best-preserved temple in the whole country. Columns, halls, chambers and chapels are all still standing, and two granite falcons guard the twin-towered gate. One inscription inside is simply a list of the scrolls once held in the temple library.

Back on board for afternoon tea on the sundeck and dinner as the ship sails to Aswan.

Meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner · Overnight: on board in Aswan

In short:

the granite quarries, then a boat across to Philae Temple. A free afternoon and evening in Aswan. Overnight on board.

Breakfast on board, then your guide takes you to the Unfinished Obelisk, still lying in the granite quarry that supplied ancient Egypt with its building stone. Had it been finished it would have been the single largest piece of stone ever worked — but a crack appeared, and it was abandoned exactly where it lay. You can see the tool marks.

Then you cross by boat to Agilkia Island for Philae Temple, one of the Nubian temples lifted stone by stone and rebuilt on higher ground before the High Dam flooded its original island. Walk its long colonnades and look for the last hieroglyphic and demotic inscriptions ever carved in Egypt — the end of a writing system that lasted 3,500 years.

Back to the ship for lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, with the rest of the day free in Aswan.

Meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner · Overnight: on board in Aswan

In short:

breakfast on board, then the flight from Aswan to Cairo. Optional Abu Simbel excursion before you fly. Overnight in Cairo.

Your last breakfast on the Nile, then a private air-conditioned transfer to Aswan Airport and the flight back to Cairo, where you check in to your hotel for the final night.

Optional: Abu Simbel — $130 per person

If you want the one temple everybody recognises from photographs, this is the day to do it. Abu Simbel runs as a small group tour and starts early: departure is between 5:00 and 6:00 am, the drive is three and a half hours each way, and you get two hours at the site. It is a long day, and most people who do it say it was the best one.

Meals: breakfast · Overnight: Mövenpick Media City, Cairo

In short:

breakfast at the hotel, then your transfer to Cairo International Airport.

Breakfast at your hotel, then we take you to Cairo International Airport for your flight home — with the pyramids, four nights on the Nile and about 4,000 years of history behind you.

Meals: breakfast
One note on the cruise: Nile cruise itineraries can change without notice because of navigational conditions on the river. That may change the order of the visits, or occasionally the visits themselves.