Ten days staying at the Marriott Mena House at Giza, the Old Cataract in Aswan and the Winter Palace in Luxor, with three nights on a luxury cruise.
You are met at Cairo International Airport and transferred to the Marriott Mena House, which sits directly beneath the Great Pyramids — close enough that they fill the windows. The rest of the day is free for the gardens or the view.
A private guided morning on the Giza Plateau: the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure, the Great Sphinx and the Valley Temple. Your guide covers how they were built, what royal burial actually involved, and which of the mysteries surrounding them are real and which are invented.
A transfer to Cairo Airport and a flight south. On arrival your guide takes you to the Aswan High Dam, then to Philae Temple, built for the goddess Isis on its island in the Nile. You spend the night at the Old Cataract, the hotel that has looked out over this stretch of river for well over a century.
After breakfast at the Old Cataract you take a boat upriver to a Nubian village, where the houses are painted in deep colours and the welcome is genuine rather than staged. Later you transfer to your luxury cruise and embark for three nights, with lunch served on board.
Breakfast on deck while the boat sails to Kom Ombo, a temple built for two gods at once — Sobek and Haroeris — with everything mirrored down the centre line. You continue to Edfu, where a horse-drawn carriage takes you up to the exceptionally well-preserved Temple of Horus.
You go ashore for the Valley of the Kings, where the royal tombs run deep into the desert hills, then the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut and the Colossi of Memnon. Back to the boat for lunch and your last night aboard.
Final disembarkation after breakfast, then Luxor Temple and the vast Karnak complex — the largest religious site ever built, where you walk between columns tall enough to lose all sense of scale. Afterwards you check in at the historic Winter Palace Hotel on the corniche.
A transfer to Luxor Airport and the flight to Cairo, where you are met and escorted back to the Marriott Mena House.
A full morning at the Grand Egyptian Museum, the largest archaeological museum in the world, where the complete Tutankhamun collection is displayed together. Lunch follows before you return to the hotel.
Breakfast, check out, and a transfer to Cairo International Airport for your flight home.