7-Day Cairo and Nile Cruise Tour by Flight, Aswan to Luxor

Your trip begins as you clear passport control at Cairo International Airport, where a representative is waiting with a sign bearing your name. A private air-conditioned vehicle then takes you to your hotel, so you skip the taxi negotiations and the guesswork of Cairo traffic after a long flight.

Nothing is scheduled for the rest of the day, and that is deliberate. International flights land at every hour, and the touring that follows starts early and covers a lot of ground. Use the time to sleep, unpack and let your body adjust to the clock. If you land with energy to spare, your hotel concierge or guide can suggest a relaxed outing nearby, but there is no obligation to go anywhere.

Your guide will confirm the Day 2 pickup time, either in person at the airport or with a short welcome call the evening before. A few small jobs pay off tonight: change a modest amount of cash into Egyptian pounds for small purchases, charge your phone and camera, and set out comfortable walking shoes and a hat for the Giza Plateau.

No meals are included today.

After breakfast you are driven to the Giza Plateau, where the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure have stood for roughly 4,500 years. Your Egyptologist explains how the stone was quarried and moved, why the monuments line up so precisely with the cardinal points, and what they meant to kings who saw them as a path to eternal life. Khafre's pyramid often looks the tallest because it sits on higher bedrock, and it still keeps a patch of its smooth original casing near the summit. Below it crouches the Great Sphinx, cut from a single limestone outcrop with a lion's body and a king's face.

Next comes the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest archaeological museum devoted to a single civilization. Your guide leads you up the grand staircase, lined with royal statues, and into the galleries where Tutankhamun's complete burial collection is shown together: gilded shrines, chariots, jewelry and hundreds of smaller objects that reveal how a young king was equipped for the afterlife.

Lunch is at a local restaurant. In the late afternoon you reach Khan el-Khalili, a bazaar that has traded since the 14th century, with spice stalls, goldsmiths and craft workshops packed into narrow lanes. There is time to bargain, browse or sit down over a glass of Egyptian tea before you return to your hotel by evening, ahead of an early flight.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

An early pickup takes you to Cairo Airport for a morning flight south. In Aswan, your local guide meets you and starts at the Aswan High Dam, the 20th-century project that tamed the Nile's annual flood, generates hydroelectric power and created Lake Nasser, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world. From the top you can see the scale of the reservoir on one side and the narrowed river on the other, which explains a great deal about modern Egypt's farming and electricity.

A short motorboat ride then brings you to the Temple of Philae, dedicated to the goddess Isis. When the dams threatened to drown it, a UNESCO-led campaign dismantled the complex and rebuilt it on higher ground on Agilkia Island. Look for the graceful open pavilion known as Trajan's Kiosk, and for the late inscriptions that make Philae one of the last places in Egypt where the old gods were formally worshipped.

After lunch you transfer to the dock and board your Nile cruise ship. Once you have checked into your cabin, the rest of the afternoon is yours: take a seat on the sun deck and watch the feluccas tack across the river against the granite boulders and the sand of the West Bank. Dinner is served on board, and the ship spends the night in Aswan.

Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After breakfast on board, the ship sails north and reaches Kom Ombo in the late morning or early afternoon. The temple stands right on a bend of the river, and it is unlike any other in Egypt: a true double temple, split down its long axis so that the crocodile god Sobek and the falcon god Horus each have their own entrance, halls and sanctuary, built side by side in mirror image.

Your guide will show you the details that reward a slow walk. The reliefs include a famous panel often read as a display of medical instruments, and near the outer wall is a well-preserved Nilometer, a stepped shaft that let priests measure the river's height and predict the year's harvest. Next to the temple, the Crocodile Museum displays mummified crocodiles that were once kept and venerated in Sobek's honor, along with coffins and offerings found in the area.

You return to the ship for lunch as it continues toward Edfu. The afternoon is free for the sun deck, the onboard activities, or simply watching the riverbank go by: palm groves, sugarcane, water buffalo, mud-brick villages and children waving from the shore. Dinner is served on board, and the ship moors at Edfu for the night.

Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After breakfast you disembark and take a short horse-drawn carriage or tuk-tuk ride into town to the Temple of Horus at Edfu. Note that the carriage is an optional extra paid locally. Built under the Ptolemaic kings over roughly two centuries, Edfu is one of the best-preserved temples in Egypt, and it shows you what a complete temple looked like: a towering entrance pylon, an open courtyard, columned halls that grow darker as you move inward, and a sanctuary that still holds a polished granite shrine.

Your guide will point out the long relief cycle on the enclosure walls that tells the story of Horus defeating his rival Seth, and the twin granite falcons guarding the entrance. Because the temple lay buried in sand and silt for centuries, many of its carved surfaces escaped the weathering that softened other sites.

Back on board, lunch is served as the ship continues north toward Luxor. The ship usually arrives in the afternoon or evening. Depending on the arrival time, you may visit Luxor Temple after dark, when floodlights pick out its colonnades and colossal statues right on the Nile corniche in the center of town. Dinner is served on board, and the ship spends the night in Luxor.

Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After breakfast you check out of the ship and cross to the West Bank, where the New Kingdom pharaohs were buried. In the Valley of the Kings, tombs are cut deep into the limestone hills, their corridors painted with texts meant to guide the king through the night journey of the sun. The standard ticket covers three tombs, and Tutankhamun's tomb can be added for a separate fee paid locally.

From there you visit the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, a sequence of broad terraces set against a sheer cliff, built for the woman who ruled Egypt as pharaoh for some 20 years. Look for the reliefs of her expedition to the land of Punt. A photo stop follows at the Colossi of Memnon, two seated giants that once fronted the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III.

After lunch at a local restaurant you cross to the East Bank for Karnak, the largest religious complex built in the ancient world. Its Hypostyle Hall holds 134 massive columns, and an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes marks the approach. Give yourself a moment in the hall to look up: the column capitals still carry traces of their original paint.

In the evening you transfer to Luxor Airport for your flight back to Cairo, reaching your hotel late in the day.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

Your final morning is unhurried. After breakfast at the hotel you have free time until your transfer, and how much depends on your flight. Use it to pack your purchases from the bazaar carefully, settle any hotel extras, or take a last walk nearby.

Your driver collects you at the agreed time and takes you privately to Cairo International Airport for your international departure. Cairo traffic can be unpredictable, so the pickup time is set with both the roads and airline check-in in mind, giving you a calm arrival at the terminal rather than a rush.

Before you go, a practical note: keep a little Egyptian currency for coffee or a snack airside, and make sure any antiques-style souvenirs you bought are clearly modern reproductions with a receipt, since genuine antiquities cannot leave the country. With that, your week of pyramids, river temples and royal tombs comes to a close.

Meals: breakfast.