10-Day Cairo, Nile Cruise & Hurghada Tour with Saqqara and Memphis

Your trip starts in the arrivals hall at Cairo International Airport, where a representative waits with a sign bearing your name. A private, air-conditioned vehicle then takes you to your hotel, so you skip the taxi negotiations and guesswork that can make a first hour in Cairo feel chaotic. The airport sits on the city's northeastern edge, and the drive in gives you a first look at a metropolis of more than 20 million people, its overpasses, minarets, and apartment blocks stretching to the horizon.

Nothing is scheduled for the rest of the day. Use it to sleep off the flight, unpack, and adjust to the time difference, because the touring days ahead begin after breakfast and run into the evening. If you land early and feel restless, the hotel concierge or your guide can suggest an easy outing close to the hotel.

Your guide confirms tomorrow's pickup time, either when you arrive or with a short welcome call this evening. No meals are included today.

After breakfast your guide collects you for a day that traces the pyramid age from its peak back to its origins. You begin on the Giza Plateau with the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure. The Great Pyramid of Khufu, raised around 2560 BC, remained the tallest structure built by human hands for close to 4,000 years, and your Egyptologist explains how its builders quarried, hauled, and set its blocks. Below the pyramids waits the Great Sphinx, carved from a single outcrop of limestone that the quarrymen left standing.

Next you drive south to Saqqara, the vast burial ground of ancient Memphis. Its centerpiece, the Step Pyramid of Djoser, is the earliest monumental stone building in Egypt, designed by the architect Imhotep roughly a century before Giza. Study its six stacked tiers and you can see the idea that Giza later perfected.

The final stop is Memphis itself, the first capital of a unified Egypt, where an open-air museum holds a colossal limestone statue of Ramesses II lying on its back and a serene alabaster sphinx. Lunch is at a local restaurant, and you return to your hotel in the evening.

Today moves from the pharaohs to medieval Cairo. After breakfast you drive to the Grand Egyptian Museum near the Giza Plateau, a vast museum devoted to a single civilization. Here the Tutankhamun collection is displayed together, from the gilded shrines and jewelry to the chariots found in his tomb in 1922. Your guide leads you up the Grand Staircase, lined with royal statues, and through the Tutankhamun galleries, picking out the pieces that tell the young king's story.

Next comes the Citadel of Salah al-Din, the fortress the sultan began in the 1170s to defend Cairo against the Crusaders. Its skyline belongs to the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, faced in alabaster and topped with slender pencil minarets; on a clear day the terrace looks across the rooftops toward the pyramids.

After lunch at a local restaurant you finish in Khan el-Khalili, a bazaar that has traded since the 14th century. Your guide can steer you toward reputable spice, perfume, and metalwork shops, or you can sit down over mint tea at one of the old cafés. You are back at the hotel in the evening, ready for an early start.

An early pickup takes you to Cairo Airport for the morning flight south to Aswan. Your Aswan guide meets you on arrival and begins at the High Dam, completed in 1970 to control the Nile's annual flood. Behind it stretches Lake Nasser, one of the largest artificial lakes on earth, which extends across the border into Sudan.

A short motorboat ride then carries you to the Temple of Philae, the sanctuary of the goddess Isis. When rising water threatened the temple, a UNESCO-led campaign dismantled it and rebuilt it, block by block, on the higher ground of Agilkia Island. Look for the long colonnades and the reliefs of Isis with her son Horus.

You also visit the Unfinished Obelisk, still lying in its granite quarry. Finished, it would have stood about 42 meters tall, but a crack forced the carvers to abandon it, and the marks around it show how such monuments were cut from the bedrock.

After lunch you transfer to the dock and check in to your Nile cruise ship. The afternoon is free on deck as the light softens over Aswan's riverbank and its granite islands. Dinner is served on board.

After breakfast on board, the ship sails north and reaches Kom Ombo in the late morning or early afternoon. The temple here is unlike any other in Egypt: a true double temple, divided along its length so that one half honors Sobek, the crocodile god, and the other honors Horus. Twin entrances, twin halls, and twin sanctuaries sit side by side, a layout created so that two cults could share one sacred hill above the river. The building dates mostly to the Ptolemaic period, and your guide will show you a well-known relief often read as a set of surgical instruments.

Beside the temple, the Crocodile Museum displays mummified crocodiles recovered from the area, along with the coffins some were buried in, a vivid reminder of how seriously Sobek's worshippers took their god.

You return to the ship for lunch as it continues toward Edfu. The afternoon is yours, and a lounger on the sun deck is the best seat for watching the valley slide past: palm groves, sugarcane fields, fishermen in small boats, and mud-brick villages close to the water. Dinner is served on board, and the ship spends the night at Edfu.

After breakfast you leave the ship for a short ride by horse-drawn carriage or tuk-tuk to the Temple of Edfu (the carriage fare is not included). Dedicated to the falcon god Horus and finished in the first century BC, it is among the best-preserved temples in Egypt, with its roof, towering pylon, and inner sanctuary still in place. At the entrance a granite falcon wearing the double crown stands guard, and the walls carry long inscriptions on the temple's rituals and the mythic contest between Horus and Seth.

You return to the ship for lunch as it sails on toward Luxor, typically arriving in the afternoon or evening. Depending on the arrival time, you then visit Luxor Temple, which stands on the corniche in the center of the city and is lit after dark. Built largely by Amenhotep III and Ramesses II, it greets you with seated colossi of Ramesses II and a single obelisk; its twin has stood in the Place de la Concorde in Paris since the 1830s. Inside, a mosque still sits high on the old temple walls, a sign of how long people have used this spot. Dinner is on board, and the ship is moored in Luxor tonight.

After breakfast you check out of the ship and cross to Luxor's West Bank, the great necropolis of ancient Thebes. In the Valley of the Kings, royal tombs run deep into the limestone hills, their corridors painted with texts meant to guide the dead king through the underworld. Your standard ticket typically covers three tombs; Tutankhamun's tomb, found by Howard Carter in 1922, needs a separate ticket that is not included.

Next is the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, three broad terraces set against a sheer wall of cliffs, built for one of the few women to rule Egypt as pharaoh. Look for the reliefs recording her trading expedition to the land of Punt. A photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon, two weathered seated statues of Amenhotep III that once fronted a temple long since vanished, rounds out the morning.

After lunch at a local restaurant you set off on the drive of roughly three to four hours across the Eastern Desert to Hurghada. The green ribbon of the Nile gives way to bare, rust-colored mountains and finally the blue of the Red Sea. You check in to your beach resort with the evening free.

Today has no alarm and no guide. Hurghada runs for miles along the Red Sea coast, and its resorts face water that stays clear and warm for much of the year, so the simplest plan is a lounger, a swim, and a long lunch in the shade.

If you want more, the resort concierge can arrange optional excursions, booked and paid locally. The classic choice is a boat trip to the reefs, where a mask and snorkel reveal hard and soft corals, parrotfish, and clouds of tiny orange fish a few meters below the surface. Certified divers can join day boats to deeper sites. A boat excursion to the nearby islands, where the sand is pale and the shallows turn turquoise, or a sunset cruise along the coast are gentler options.

A practical tip: reef-safe sunscreen and a long-sleeved swim shirt protect both you and the coral, and the sun on the water is stronger than it feels in the sea breeze. Drink more water than you think you need after several hot days of touring. Breakfast is included today; lunch and dinner are at your own expense.

The morning is still yours. Take a last swim, linger over breakfast on the terrace, or, if your schedule allows, fit in a short optional snorkeling trip before you pack.

In the afternoon you check out and begin the road transfer back to Cairo in a private air-conditioned vehicle. The highway runs north along the coast, with the Red Sea Mountains on one side and the water of the Gulf of Suez on the other for long stretches, before turning inland across the desert toward the capital. It is a long drive, and you will likely reach the city in the evening, depending on traffic, so keep water, snacks, and a charged phone or a book within reach.

You check in to your Cairo hotel with time to rest before tomorrow's departure. Dinner is not included tonight, but the hotel can suggest a good place nearby if you have energy left. If you pack this evening and set aside the documents you will need at the airport, the final morning will stay calm.

Your last morning in Egypt starts with breakfast at the hotel. Depending on your flight time, you may have a few free hours for a walk along the Nile, a final coffee, or a last look at the shopping you carried back from Khan el-Khalili.

When it is time, a private driver takes you to Cairo International Airport for your international flight. Cairo traffic is famously hard to predict, so your driver builds in a margin for congestion and check-in, and you reach the terminal without a rush. Allow extra time inside as well, because security screening begins right at the terminal entrance.

Two final tips. Any antique-looking souvenirs you bought should be modern replicas, since genuine antiquities cannot leave the country. And keep a few small banknotes handy for porters and your driver, as gratuities are not included in the package. Breakfast is the last meal included, and with it your Egypt trip comes to a close.