10 Days Egypt Highlights
Best Seller Featured Package 10 Days / 9 Nights

10 Days Egypt Highlights

The perfect first taste of Egypt — three cities, a slow river between them, and a rhythm that never asks you to hurry a single wonder.

📅 10 Days
🌙 9 Nights
📍 3 Cities
5★ Hotels
💰 $1,290 From / Person
In brief

The 10 Days Egypt Highlights is an Egypt tour package, covering 3 cities, including a Nile cruise. It features 5-star hotels. Prices start from $1,290 per person.

Overview

Why this journey

Ten days is the shape most first-time visitors need — enough to include everything essential, not so long that fatigue steals the last temples from you. Here's why this specific version of the route works.

The Nile does the pacing
Four nights on a cruise deck means Egypt reveals itself at the speed the ancient cities were built at — one temple per morning, one long afternoon, one dinner watching the water. No day feels rushed because the boat is doing the moving.
🗺️
Cairo first, Luxor last
The itinerary is calibrated so you meet the pharaohs' monuments in the order they gain meaning — the pyramids as beginnings, the museum for context, then the temples along the river, then the tombs at Luxor where everything the pharaohs built the earlier stone for finally comes together.
🏛️
Egyptologist guide throughout
Every site is walked with a Cairo University-trained Egyptologist — not a scripted commentary but someone who reads hieroglyphs and answers the questions you actually have, at your pace.
✂️
Nothing you'll wish you'd skipped
Every stop earned its place. No filler shopping stops, no papyrus factories, no camel photo-ops billed at ten times the fair price. You'll come home with a list of things you saw, not a list of things you paid to avoid.
Day-by-Day Itinerary

Your week in Egypt

Each day is carefully paced with a balance of must-see monuments, leisure time, and authentic local experiences.

1 Day
Cairo

Arrive Cairo

Meet-and-greet at Cairo International — someone holding a small sign with your name, walking you past the queue for the visa-on-arrival window and out to a private car. The drive into the city takes an hour if the traffic is kind, longer if it isn't. Sofitel Cairo Nile El Gezirah on the west bank of Zamalek Island — a corner room with the Nile below and the Cairo Tower catching the last light. Nothing scheduled for tonight. Sleep off the flight.
🍽️ D 🚗 Airport transfer included
2 Day
Giza

Pyramids & the Sphinx

Early. The Giza plateau opens at 8am and you want to be there when it does, before the buses. Your guide will walk you to the base of the Great Pyramid first, because scale is everything — 2.3 million stone blocks, each the weight of a small car, cut and moved 4,500 years ago without a wheel on site. The Sphinx afterwards, from the temple below. Lunch at Khufu's restaurant with a full pyramid view, then across town to the Grand Egyptian Museum for the Tutankhamun galleries — 5,398 objects from KV62 shown together for the first time in a hundred years.
🍽️ B, L 🎫 All entrances included ⏱️ ~9 hours
3 Day
Cairo

Old Cairo — Coptic, Islamic, Alive

A slower day. Morning in Coptic Cairo: the Hanging Church suspended on Roman gate-towers, Ben Ezra Synagogue where the Cairo Geniza was hidden for a thousand years, and the small museum where the Nag Hammadi codices sleep in climate-controlled cases. Lunch at Naguib Mahfouz Café inside Khan el-Khalili. Afternoon bazaar-walk — copper alley, spice alley, mother-of-pearl alley. Sunset from the Citadel of Saladin, with the Muhammad Ali Mosque's alabaster walls behind you and all of Cairo laid out below.
🍽️ B 🎫 All entrances included ⏱️ ~6 hours
4 Day
Aswan

Fly South to Aswan

Morning flight to Aswan — barely an hour, but you land in a different Egypt. The air here is drier, the light harder, the river narrow and swift. Motor-boat transfer across to Philae Temple on Agilkia Island — the Isis temple UNESCO relocated stone-by-stone when Lake Nasser rose. Late afternoon at the High Dam and the Unfinished Obelisk in the northern quarries. Sunset felucca between Elephantine Island and the Kitchener botanical garden, tea served on deck.
✈️ CAI → ASW flight included 🍽️ B, D Sunset felucca sail
5 Day
Aswan → Kom Ombo

Embark · Kom Ombo at Sunset

Optional pre-dawn convoy to Abu Simbel — three and a half hours south across the desert, standing at the foot of Ramses II's colossi by mid-morning, back to Aswan by lunch. Or a slow morning: breakfast on the terrace, a walk through the Nubian souk, coffee at the Old Cataract Hotel where Agatha Christie wrote Death on the Nile. Embark your cruise ship after lunch — the boat begins its slow drift north. Kom Ombo temple at sunset, unusual for being dedicated to two gods at once (Sobek the crocodile-god, and Horus).
🚢 Embark Movenpick MS Sun Ray 🍽️ B, L, D 🎫 Kom Ombo entrance
6 Day
Edfu → Esna

Edfu & the Esna Lock

The best-preserved temple in Egypt is at Edfu — dedicated to Horus, buried in silt for centuries, which is why the roof is still on and the reliefs are still crisp. You'll visit by horse-carriage from the boat, first thing. Back on board for lunch as the cruise ships queue for the Esna Lock, the single 3-metre step-down in the river. Afternoon on the sun deck. A galabeya party in the evening — half kitsch, half fun, entirely a tradition.
🍽️ B, L, D Continuous cruising 🎭 Galabeya party tonight
7 Day
Luxor

Arrive Luxor — East Bank

Disembark after breakfast. Straight to Karnak — the temple complex the New Kingdom pharaohs kept adding to for two thousand years. The Hypostyle Hall alone is 5,000 square metres of stone forest, 134 columns each 22 metres tall, painted (originally) in the primary colours you can still see in the shaded ceiling corners. Luxor Temple in the late afternoon, connected to Karnak by the Avenue of Sphinxes UNESCO restored in 2021. Overnight at the Sofitel Winter Palace — the 1907 hotel where Howard Carter announced the discovery of Tutankhamun.
🍽️ B, L 🎫 Karnak + Luxor Temple ⏱️ ~7 hours
8 Day
Luxor

West Bank — The Valleys

Optional 4:30am hot-air balloon over the West Bank, drifting silently across the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut's temple, and the sugar-cane fields beyond — one hour aloft, breakfast on landing. Then the Valley of the Kings itself: three tombs open on your standard ticket (Ramses IV, Merenptah, and one of the earlier rotation), with Seti I's tomb — the deepest and most beautifully painted — available for a separate premium fee. Hatshepsut's terraced mortuary temple in the noon light. The Colossi of Memnon on the way back — a five-minute photo stop of two 18-metre statues that once guarded a temple long since collapsed.
🍽️ B 🎫 Valley of Kings + Hatshepsut 🎈 Optional balloon sunrise
9 Day
Cairo

Fly Back to Cairo

Morning flight to Cairo. Afternoon free — final Khan el-Khalili run for the gifts you didn't buy the first time, or the Manial Palace on Rhoda Island (a Turkish-Egyptian jewel-box most visitors miss), or nothing at all. Farewell dinner on the Nile Maxim dinner-cruise: a two-hour circuit of Zamalek with tanoura dancing and a decent buffet, sailing past the illuminated bridges.
✈️ LXR → CAI flight included 🍽️ B, D 🚢 Nile dinner cruise
10 Day
Cairo

Departure

Private transfer to the airport with as much notice as you like — most departures leave a leisurely late-morning window for a final coffee. You'll come home with 3,000 photos, one or two carved stone fragments (from the museum shop, not the actual temples), and the peculiar Egyptian ability to see time differently.
🍽️ B 🚗 Airport transfer included
What's in the Price

Transparent inclusions

What's Included

  • 9 nights accommodation (4 hotels + 3 nights cruise)
  • All transfers and domestic flights (Cairo↔Aswan, Luxor→Cairo)
  • All guided tours with certified Egyptologist
  • All entrance fees to listed monuments
  • Daily breakfast + selected lunches and dinners
  • Welcome packet, bottled water on tours
  • All taxes and service charges

Not Included

  • International flights to/from Egypt
  • Egypt entry visa ($25 USD on arrival)
  • Travel insurance (strongly recommended)
  • Optional excursions (Abu Simbel, hot-air balloon)
  • Drinks at meals (except where specified)
  • Tips and gratuities
Your Journey

Cairo to Luxor

A perfectly-paced loop covering Egypt's most iconic destinations.

🏛️
Cairo
🌴
Aswan
🐊
Luxor
Where You'll Stay

Hand-picked accommodations

All hotels are 5-star with prime locations, exceptional reviews, and the personal touches we look for: pool access, easy transfers, and rooms with views.

3 nights

Sofitel Cairo Nile El Gezirah

📍 Cairo · Corner-tower rooms on Zamalek Island with a full…
Aswan → Luxor

Movenpick MS Sun Ray

📍 4-night Nile cruise · 5-star cruise ship, French-window cabins with private balcony,…
1 night

Sofitel Old Cataract Aswan

📍 Aswan · The 1899 hotel on the granite cliff above…
2 nights

Sofitel Winter Palace Luxor

📍 Luxor · The 1907 Belle Époque hotel on the Corniche…
Pricing

Transparent pricing

All prices are per person, USD. Children 0-5 free, ages 6-11 receive 50% off.

Season Per Person
Double
Solo
Traveler
Per Person
Triple
🌿 Low Season May–Aug
$1,290/person $1,690solo $1,190/person
❄️ High Season Sept–Apr
$1,490/person $1,990solo $1,390/person
🌷 Easter Week
$1,690/person $2,290solo $1,590/person
🎄 Christmas / New Year
$1,890/person $2,590solo $1,790/person
👶Infants 0-5 years: FREE 🧒Children 6-11: 50% off adult price 💵Group of 10+? Ask for special rates 🔒20% deposit secures your booking
Guest Reviews

From travelers who took this trip

★★★★★

"The most magical week of our lives. Watching the sun rise over Karnak from our balcony on the Soleil — there are no words. The team thought of everything, from…"

EM
Emma & Marcus Thompson homepage,boat,cruise_program · May 2026
★★★★★

"We've cruised the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Mekong. Nothing comes close to the Nile aboard the Soleil. The Egyptologist guide, the dining, the temple visits — everything operated at a…"

RO
Robert & Helen Wilson homepage,boat · May 2026
★★★★★

"As a solo traveler, I was nervous about a cruise. Aswan Luxor Cruises and the Soleil team made me feel taken care of every single day. The Egyptologist became a…"

JE
Jennifer Liu homepage · May 2026
FAQ

Common questions

Is Egypt safe for tourists right now? +

Yes — tourist destinations are very safe. We've operated continuously since 2010 with over 12,000 travelers without incident.

What's the best time of year to visit? +

October to April is ideal — daytime temperatures of 22-28°C. Summer is hot but offers the best prices.

Do I need a visa? +

Most nationalities can get a visa-on-arrival at Cairo airport for $25 (USD cash recommended).

Can the itinerary be customized? +

Absolutely — every detail can be adjusted. About 60% of our clients customize at least something.

What's the deposit and cancellation policy? +

20% deposit secures your booking. Free cancellation up to 60 days before departure.

What about food allergies and dietary needs? +

All partner hotels and cruise ships accommodate vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, halal, and kosher needs with advance notice. Please inform us at booking.

How much should I tip? +

$10/day for your guide, $5/day for your driver, and $30-40 total for cruise crew.

Destinations

Destinations on this trip

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