Ten days with two beach nights in Sharm El Sheikh between Cairo and three nights on a five-star boat, with four domestic flights and the entry visa included.
A representative meets you at Cairo International Airport, handles the formalities and takes the family to your hotel in a private vehicle. The rest of the day is free — the pool is usually the right answer after a long flight, and dinner with a view over the city is easy to arrange.
Breakfast, then out to Giza with a private Egyptologist for the Great Pyramid of Cheops and the pyramids of Chephren and Mykerinos, and the Great Sphinx below them. A short camel ride is included, which children take to more readily than they do to museums. Lunch at a local restaurant, then the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, with its mummies and its rooms of small, strange, priceless objects.
Check out after breakfast and take the short flight to Sharm El Sheikh, where you are met and taken to your beachfront resort. The afternoon is entirely free: the sand, the water, or the pool.
Nothing scheduled. The snorkelling here is genuinely world-class and needs no more than a mask; for anyone wanting more there are boat trips, desert excursions and quad rides, and for anyone wanting less there is the beach.
A morning flight north. Your representative meets you on arrival and takes you to your hotel. The evening is free.
An early transfer for the flight south, and Upper Egypt begins. Philae Temple comes first, built for Isis on its island in the Nile. Then a boat along the river to a traditional Nubian village, where the houses are painted in colours you see nowhere else in Egypt and the welcome is part of the point. You board your cruise afterwards.
Sailing north to Kom Ombo Temple, built for two gods at once — Sobek the crocodile god and Horus the falcon god — with a mirrored half for each. Then Edfu Temple, reached by horse-drawn carriage from the mooring and among the best-preserved in Egypt. Dinner on board and an evening on deck.
Across the river to the Valley of the Kings, where many pharaohs including Tutankhamun were buried in tombs cut into the rock. The Temple of Hatshepsut follows, built for Egypt's most powerful female ruler, and then the Colossi of Memnon before you return to the boat for lunch.
Disembarkation, then the Karnak Temple Complex — colossal columns, sacred lakes and walls covered in hieroglyphs — followed by Luxor Temple in the middle of the modern city. A transfer to the airport in the afternoon and a flight to Cairo, where you are met and taken to your hotel for the last night.
Breakfast and check-out, then your representative transfers you to Cairo International Airport for your onward flight.