Seven days in December: three nights in Cairo for Giza and the Grand Egyptian Museum, and three on a five-star boat from Aswan to Luxor.
A representative greets you at Cairo International Airport, handles the airport formalities and transfers you to your hotel in a private air-conditioned vehicle. Rest, or go out and take a first look at the city.
The Giza Plateau after breakfast, for the Great Pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Mykerinos and the Sphinx, then the Valley Temple, where the royal purification rituals were performed. The afternoon goes to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest archaeological museum in the world, whose Tutankhamun galleries are the reason to allow proper time for it. Lunch at a local restaurant, and a quiet evening.
A flight south after breakfast. Your guide takes you to Philae Temple, built for Isis and relocated to Agilkia Island, and then to the High Dam. You board the boat in the afternoon, have lunch on deck, and the ship stays at its Aswan mooring for the evening, with the desert on one side and the river on the other.
Breakfast while sailing to Kom Ombo, where the temple is shared between Sobek, the crocodile god, and Horus the Elder, and the Crocodile Museum next door displays the mummified crocodiles recovered from the site. On to Edfu by horse-drawn carriage from the mooring, for the Temple of Horus, its pylons, carvings and reliefs of the long fight between Horus and Set all still legible.
The Valley of the Kings in the morning, where the most powerful pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried in decorated tombs, Tutankhamun's on a separate ticket. Then the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, built into the limestone cliffs and the clearest surviving statement of what Egypt's most remarkable female ruler wanted said about her. A photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon closes the tour.
The Karnak Temple Complex after breakfast, with its columns, sacred lake and inscriptions running through centuries of pharaohs and gods, and then Luxor Temple, once joined to Karnak by the Avenue of Sphinxes. A transfer to Luxor Airport in the afternoon and a flight to Cairo, where the last evening is yours — a dinner overlooking the Nile is the obvious way to spend it.
Breakfast, then a representative takes you to Cairo International Airport for your flight home.