08 Days Egypt Christmas Holiday

Your Egyptian journey opens the moment you touch down at Cairo International Airport. Our representative is waiting to greet you, help with the arrival formalities, and see you into a private air-conditioned car for the transfer to your hotel. After check-in the evening is yours to rest and ease into the rhythm of Egypt before the days of discovery ahead.

• Meals: —
• Overnight: Cairo

After breakfast, set out with your private guide for the Great Pyramids of Giza and the watchful Sphinx, the last survivor of the ancient world's seven wonders. Enjoy time for pictures and an optional camel ride across the plateau.

Continue to the Grand Egyptian Museum, the vast new home of Egypt's antiquities overlooking the pyramids, where the complete Tutankhamun collection is displayed together for the first time. Lunch is served before you return to your hotel.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch
• Overnight: Cairo

After breakfast fly to Luxor, ancient Thebes, and step aboard your five-star cruiser for lunch. In the afternoon explore the East Bank: the immense Karnak Temple complex with its forest of towering columns, then the graceful Luxor Temple, once joined to Karnak by an avenue of sphinxes. Return to the ship for dinner and your first night on the Nile.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
• Overnight: Luxor

Cross to the West Bank, the great necropolis of Thebes. Descend into the painted royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings, admire the terraces of Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari, and pause beneath the towering Colossi of Memnon. An optional sunrise hot-air balloon flight over the monuments is available for early risers.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
• Overnight: Luxor

As the ship sails south, a horse-drawn carriage brings you from the dock to the Temple of Horus at Edfu, among the best-preserved temples in all of Egypt. Cruising on to Kom Ombo, you visit the unusual double Temple of Kom Ombo, shared between the crocodile god Sobek and Horus the Elder. Meals are served on board as you continue upriver.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
• Overnight: on board the cruise

Explore Aswan this morning, beginning at the High Dam before a short motorboat ride to the island sanctuary of Philae, dedicated to Isis. See the granite quarries and the Unfinished Obelisk, and enjoy an optional felucca sail around Elephantine Island and a visit to a colourful Nubian village.

• Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
• Overnight: Aswan

An early start brings you to the great rock-cut temples of Abu Simbel, built by Ramses II and dedicated to himself and his queen Nefertari, then relocated above the waters of Lake Nasser in one of history's great rescue efforts. Later you transfer to the airport for the flight back to Cairo.

• Meals: Breakfast
• Overnight: Cairo

After a final breakfast, check out and transfer to Cairo International Airport for your onward flight, carrying home the memories of a journey through five thousand years of history.

• Meals: Breakfast
• Overnight: —