The Steigenberger Legacy has panoramic windows throughout and sails five days between Luxor and Aswan, visiting Karnak, Edfu, Kom Ombo and Philae.
Welcome aboard the Steigenberger Legacy, with time to settle into your cabin before lunch. Then out to the East Bank. Karnak is a ceremonial site of 100 hectares, entered along an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes and dominated by the Hypostyle Hall and its 134 columns. Luxor Temple comes next, linked to Karnak by the Sphinx Avenue and guarded by colossal figures of Ramses II. Afternoon tea and dinner on board.
The West Bank in the morning. The Valley of the Kings holds the painted burial chambers of generations of pharaohs, with Tutankhamun's and Seti I's available on separate tickets. The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut follows, its terraces sweeping out of the cliff face, and then the Colossi of Memnon, all that remains standing of Amenhotep III's mortuary temple. Lunch on board as the Legacy sails for Esna and through the lock there, heading south towards Edfu.
A carriage through Edfu to the Temple of Horus, Egypt's best-preserved ancient temple, where the pylons are complete and the mythological reliefs still legible. Lunch on board while sailing to Kom Ombo, whose temple is shared between two gods, Sobek and Horus the Elder, with an identical half for each. The Crocodile Mummification Museum beside it displays dozens of the preserved animals that were once sacred here.
Breakfast, then the High Dam with its view out over Lake Nasser. A motorboat takes you to Philae Temple, the island sanctuary of Isis, quiet in a way nothing on the Luxor end of the river is. The morning ends at the Unfinished Obelisk, still lying in the granite quarries where it cracked. Lunch on board, then a free afternoon.
Optional: A felucca around Elephantine Island
A final breakfast on board, then you leave the ship at Aswan.
Optional: Abu Simbel, by car or by flight at extra cost — the temples of Ramses II and Queen Nefertari, cut into rock and relocated stone by stone