8-Day Cairo, Alexandria & Nile Cruise Tour from Luxor to Aswan

Your trip begins the moment you clear passport control at Cairo International Airport. A representative waits in the arrivals hall with a sign bearing your name, then walks you to a private air-conditioned car for the drive to your hotel. After a long flight, that matters: you skip the taxi negotiations and the guesswork of a city of more than 20 million people.

Nothing is scheduled for the rest of the day, so how you spend it depends on when you land. If you arrive in the morning, the hotel staff or your guide can point you toward a low-key first outing nearby, perhaps a walk along the Nile or a coffee on a hotel terrace. If you land in the evening, simply unpack, eat when you like, and sleep.

Your guide confirms the next morning's pickup time, either in person at the airport or with a short welcome call that evening. Keep your phone charged and set to receive calls. Meals are not included today.

After breakfast you head west to the Giza Plateau, where the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure have stood on the desert edge for about 4,500 years. The Great Pyramid alone was built from roughly 2.3 million stone blocks and remained the tallest human-made structure on Earth for nearly four millennia. Your Egyptologist explains how the quarrying, ramps and labor gangs likely worked, and why each king invested a generation of resources in his tomb.

Next comes the Great Sphinx, carved from a single outcrop of limestone left behind by the quarrymen, with a lion's body and a royal head usually attributed to Khafre.

From Giza it is a short drive to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest archaeological museum in the world devoted to one civilization. Your guide leads you up the grand staircase, lined with colossal statues of kings and gods, and into the halls that display the entire Tutankhamun collection together, from the gold mask to the chariots. Lunch is at a local restaurant, and you are back at your hotel by evening.

An early breakfast, then you leave Cairo on the desert road for Alexandria, a drive of roughly two and a half to three hours that brings you to the coast by mid-morning. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, the city was the Ptolemaic capital for three centuries, and its layers show up underground as much as above it.

Your Alexandria-based guide starts at the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, a multi-level necropolis cut into the rock in the Roman period, where Egyptian gods appear in Roman armor and Greek columns frame pharaonic-style reliefs. Nearby, Pompey's Pillar, a single shaft of red Aswan granite about 27 meters tall, rises over the ruins of the Serapeum, the temple that once housed the daughter library of the great Library of Alexandria.

Lunch is seafood at a local restaurant facing the Mediterranean. In the afternoon you visit the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the striking modern library whose tilted disc of a roof faces the sea, and finish at the Qaitbay Citadel, a 15th-century fort built on the site of the ancient Pharos lighthouse. You drive back to Cairo in the early evening and reach your hotel at night.

You are collected early for the transfer to Cairo Airport and a morning flight south to Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes. Your Luxor-based guide meets you on arrival and drives straight to Karnak Temple, the largest religious complex built in the ancient world. Successive pharaohs kept adding to it for some 2,000 years, which is why it feels less like a building than a city of pylons, obelisks and courtyards. The highlight is the Hypostyle Hall, a forest of 134 columns, the tallest about 21 meters high, still carrying traces of their original paint. You enter past an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes.

Luxor Temple follows, set on the Nile corniche in the center of town. Its entrance is guarded by colossal seated statues of Ramesses II, and its colonnades are among the most graceful in Egypt.

After lunch at a local restaurant, you transfer to the dock and board your Nile cruise ship. The ship stays moored in Luxor tonight, so the afternoon is yours to unpack, find a lounger on the sun deck and watch the river traffic. Dinner is served on board.

After breakfast on board, you cross to the West Bank, the side of the river the ancient Thebans reserved for the dead. The first stop is the Valley of the Kings, a dry limestone valley where New Kingdom pharaohs, Tutankhamun among them, were buried in tombs cut deep into the hills. Your standard ticket typically covers three tombs; the tomb of Tutankhamun is an optional extra you can pay for on site. Inside, look for the painted ceilings and the texts that guide the king through the 12 hours of the night.

Next is 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 about two decades. On the way back you stop to photograph the Colossi of Memnon, two seated giants of Amenhotep III that once fronted his vanished mortuary temple.

You return to the ship for lunch as it casts off and sails south toward Edfu. Spend the afternoon on deck watching farmland, palms and mud-brick villages slide past. Dinner is on board.

After breakfast you go ashore at Edfu and ride a short distance to the Temple of Horus by horse-drawn carriage or tuk-tuk. Built under the Ptolemies between 237 and 57 BC, Edfu is one of the most complete temples in Egypt, with its roof, sanctuary and massive pylon still standing. Your guide shows you the reliefs of Horus battling his rival Seth, and the dark granite shrine that once held the god's cult statue. You are back on board for lunch as the ship continues south.

In the afternoon you reach Kom Ombo, a temple unlike any other on the river because it is two temples in one. The left half honors Horus the Elder, the right half the crocodile god Sobek, and every hall, sanctuary and doorway is doubled down a central axis. Look for the carved surgical instruments on an inner wall and the Nilometer once used to gauge the flood. Next door, the Crocodile Museum displays mummified crocodiles found in nearby cemeteries.

You return to the ship for dinner as it sails on toward Aswan through the night.

You wake with the ship docked in Aswan, where the Nile narrows between granite boulders and the desert presses close to both banks. After breakfast you check out of your cabin and start at the Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970 to control the annual flood. Behind it stretches Lake Nasser, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world.

A short motorboat ride then takes you to the Temple of Philae, dedicated to the goddess Isis. When the dam threatened to submerge it, a UNESCO-led campaign cut the temple into blocks and rebuilt it on higher ground on nearby Agilkia Island, a move completed in 1980.

After lunch you visit the Unfinished Obelisk, still lying in its granite quarry. Had it been finished, it would have stood about 42 meters tall; a crack in the stone ended the project, and the tool marks show exactly how ancient masons worked.

If time allows, you can add a short felucca sail around Elephantine Island, payable locally. You then transfer to Aswan Airport for an evening flight to Cairo and arrive at your hotel late in the day.

Your last morning starts with breakfast at the hotel. How much free time you have depends on your flight, so use it as you like: a final swim, a slow coffee, or repacking the papyrus and spices you picked up along the way. Most international flights from Cairo leave either early afternoon or late at night, and the hotel can usually store your bags if your room must be vacated first.

At the agreed time your driver collects you for the private transfer to Cairo International Airport. Cairo traffic can be unpredictable, so the driver builds in a margin for congestion and airline check-in, and you arrive with time to spare rather than in a rush. That transfer marks the end of your trip, after eight days that took you from the pyramids to the Mediterranean and down the Nile to Aswan. Breakfast is included today.