Eight days of classical Egypt: three nights in Cairo for the pyramids and four on a five-star Nile cruise, with a private Egyptologist at every site.
You are met inside Cairo International Airport by a representative who handles the arrival formalities with you, then driven to your hotel. The rest of the day is yours to settle in and recover from the flight.
After breakfast your private Egyptologist takes you out to the Giza Plateau for the Great Pyramid of Cheops and the pyramids of Chephren and Mykerinus, with the Sphinx and the Valley Temple below them. There is a short camel ride with the desert and the pyramids around you. The afternoon moves to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and its golden treasures, which is where the morning's monuments start to make sense as the work of a specific society rather than an abstraction.
Breakfast, check out, and a transfer to Cairo Airport for the short flight to Luxor. You are escorted to your Nile cruise, embark and have lunch on board. The afternoon covers Luxor's East Bank, beginning with Karnak — a complex built and rebuilt across generations — and its Great Hypostyle Hall, where the columns are packed so tightly that scale stops meaning anything. You continue to Luxor Temple, once joined to Karnak by the Avenue of Sphinxes.
Breakfast on board, then across to Luxor's West Bank. The Valley of the Kings comes first, where the New Kingdom pharaohs, Tutankhamun among them, were buried in painted tombs cut into the rock. From there to Hatshepsut's temple at Deir El Bahari, built in terraces against the cliff face, and finally the Colossi of Memnon, which have stood in the fields here for millennia.
Optional: Hot air balloon ride over Luxor
A horse-drawn carriage takes you from the mooring to the Temple of Horus at Edfu, the most complete temple standing in Egypt and among the finest Ptolemaic buildings anywhere. You sail on to Kom Ombo over lunch, and visit its temple in the afternoon — a rare double temple, built symmetrically so that Sobek, the crocodile god, and Horus the Elder each have their own half.
The morning starts at the High Dam, the structure that reshaped modern Egypt's economy and created Lake Nasser behind it. A boat then takes you to Philae Island and the Temple of Isis, which was dismantled and rebuilt on higher ground when the dam threatened to drown it. Back on board for lunch, with the afternoon free and dinner on the boat.
Optional: Visit to a Nubian village
Breakfast, disembark, and a transfer to Aswan Airport for the flight to Cairo, where you are met again and taken to your hotel. Your last evening in the city is free.
Breakfast, check out, and a transfer to Cairo International Airport for your flight home.