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

You are met in the arrivals hall at Cairo International Airport by a representative holding a sign with your name. A private air-conditioned vehicle is waiting, and your driver handles the trip into the city while you take in your first views of Cairo's sprawl along the Nile.

There is nothing on the schedule for the rest of the day. After a long flight, that is the most useful gift: time to check in, rest and adjust to the clock before touring starts tomorrow. If you land early and feel like going out, your hotel concierge or guide can recommend a relaxed outing nearby, but you are free to stay put and recover at your own pace.

Your guide will confirm tomorrow's pickup time, either at the airport or in a short welcome call the evening before. Since the day after next starts with an early flight, it helps to unpack only what you need for two nights. Keep your passport handy for domestic check-in, charge your devices, and set aside a hat, sunscreen and comfortable walking shoes for Giza.

No meals are included today.

After breakfast you are driven to the Giza Plateau, where the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure rise from the desert. They have stood for some 4,500 years, and your Egyptologist explains the methods and the motives behind them: the quarries, the ramps and the organized labor force, as well as the belief that the king's tomb was a launch point for his journey among the stars. The Great Pyramid alone was originally about 146 meters tall. You then walk down to the Great Sphinx, carved from a single limestone outcrop, with a lion's body and a pharaoh's face gazing east toward the sunrise.

From Giza you move on to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest archaeological museum dedicated to a single civilization. Your guide takes you up the grand staircase, lined with statues of kings and gods, and into the galleries where Tutankhamun's complete collection is displayed together. Seeing it all in one place, from chariots and gilded shrines to tiny amulets, shows just how much was packed into a modest royal tomb.

Lunch is at a local restaurant, and you return to your hotel in the evening to rest before an early flight.

Meals: breakfast and lunch.

You are collected early and taken to Cairo Airport for a morning flight to Luxor. Your Luxor guide meets you on arrival and heads straight to the East Bank, starting at Karnak Temple. For roughly 2,000 years, Egypt's rulers added to this complex in honor of Amun, and the result is the largest religious site of the ancient world. You enter along an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes and walk into the Hypostyle Hall, where 134 massive columns still carry their carved reliefs and traces of original paint.

Next is Luxor Temple, set right on the Nile corniche in the center of the city. Colossal statues of Ramesses II guard its entrance beside a single obelisk; its twin has stood in the Place de la Concorde in Paris since the 19th century. Inside, the colonnades built under Amenhotep III are among the most graceful in Egypt.

After lunch at a local restaurant you transfer to the dock and board your Nile cruise ship. Check into your cabin and spend the rest of the afternoon on deck while the ship stays docked in Luxor overnight. Dinner is served on board.

Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After breakfast on board you cross to the West Bank, where Thebes buried its kings. The Valley of the Kings holds more than 60 known tombs cut into the limestone hills, and the best of them are painted from floor to ceiling with scenes of the sun god's nightly voyage and the king's passage into the afterlife. Entry typically covers three tombs, with Tutankhamun's tomb available as a separate add-on paid locally.

From there you visit the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. Its broad terraces and colonnades are set against a sheer cliff, and the design feels startlingly modern for a building some 3,500 years old. Your guide will tell the story of the woman who ruled as pharaoh and of the successors who later tried to erase her name. A photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon, the two great seated statues of Amenhotep III, follows.

You return to the ship for lunch as it sets sail south toward Edfu. The afternoon is yours: relax on the sun deck, watch village life and farmland along the banks, or join the onboard activities as the ship moves through the Nile Valley. Dinner is served on board in the evening.

Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After breakfast you go ashore at Edfu and take a short horse-drawn carriage or tuk-tuk ride to the Temple of Horus. The carriage is an optional extra paid locally. Built by the Ptolemaic kings over nearly two centuries, Edfu is one of the best-preserved temples in Egypt, with its roof, walls and huge entrance pylon largely intact. Your guide will point out the reliefs of Horus battling Seth, the granite falcon at the inner doorway and the sanctuary, which still holds its polished stone shrine.

Back on board, lunch is served as the ship continues upriver toward Kom Ombo. In the afternoon you visit the double temple there, which honors two gods at once: Sobek, the crocodile, and Horus, the falcon. Its halls, sanctuaries and courts are built side by side in mirror image, each with its own entrance. Next door, the Crocodile Museum displays mummified crocodiles once kept and venerated at the temple, along with their coffins.

Kom Ombo is especially atmospheric in the late afternoon light, when the sandstone turns gold above the river. You return to the ship for dinner as it continues south toward Aswan overnight.

Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

You wake with the ship docked in Aswan, Egypt's southernmost city, where the Nile runs between dark granite islands and golden dunes. After breakfast your day tour begins at the Aswan High Dam, the 20th-century project that controls the Nile's flow and created Lake Nasser, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world. Your guide explains how it transformed farming and electricity in Egypt, and what it cost the Nubian communities and monuments to the south.

A short motorboat ride then takes you to the Temple of Philae, dedicated to the goddess Isis. When rising water threatened it, a UNESCO-led campaign moved the entire temple to higher ground on a neighboring island. Look for Trajan's Kiosk by the water and the Roman-era additions that show how long the cult of Isis endured.

After lunch you visit the Unfinished Obelisk, still lying in its granite quarry where a crack forced the masons to abandon it. Its size and the tool marks around it explain how obelisks were cut. Time permitting, you may also take a short felucca sail around Elephantine Island, an optional extra paid locally. You return to the ship for dinner and a night docked in Aswan.

Meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After breakfast you check out of the ship and transfer to Aswan Airport for your flight back to Cairo. On arrival you are met and driven privately to your hotel.

The rest of the day is free, and after a week of guided touring it is a welcome change of pace. You might return to a neighborhood you liked, pick up gifts you passed over earlier, or simply rest at the hotel. If you want ideas, Cairo has plenty to fill a few hours: a walk along the Nile in the late afternoon, a coffee in one of the old downtown cafés, or a felucca ride on the river at sunset. These are suggestions only and are not part of the package, so arrange them independently or ask your hotel's concierge.

This is also a good time to repack. Put fragile souvenirs in your carry-on, keep receipts for any reproduction pieces, and check your flight details for tomorrow so your transfer can be timed correctly.

Meals: breakfast.

Enjoy a last breakfast at your hotel. Depending on your flight time, you may have a few free hours to relax, take a final walk or finish packing before your transfer.

At the agreed time your driver collects you for the private transfer to Cairo International Airport. The pickup is planned around Cairo's traffic and airline check-in, so you arrive at the terminal calmly and on time.

A few last tips: keep some Egyptian pounds for a coffee after security, carry any medication and valuables in your hand luggage, and remember that genuine antiquities cannot be exported, so hold on to receipts for any reproductions you bought in the markets. Over eight days you will have seen the pyramids, the treasures of Tutankhamun, the temples and tombs of Luxor and the granite islands of Aswan, with four nights on the river in between.

Meals: breakfast.