Egypt Vacation: The Best 12-Day Egypt Itinerary

Day by day

The plan as the operator publishes it. Exact timings are confirmed with your booking.

1. Day 1 Arrival in Cairo

   Arrive at Cairo International Airport, where your Memphis Tours representative meets you inside the terminal, assists with passport control and baggage, and escorts you to your private air-conditioned vehicle.
2. Day 2 Giza Pyramids & the Grand Egyptian Museum

   After breakfast, meet your private Egyptologist and travel to the Giza Plateau. Explore the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx and the Valley Temple, with time at the panoramic viewpoint for photographs across all three pyramids.
3. Day 3 Fly to Luxor, Embarkation & East Bank Temples

   Transfer privately to Cairo Airport for your included flight to Luxor. You are met on arrival and taken to the MS Salacia, the first of your two vessels, to settle into your cabin.
4. Day 4 Luxor West Bank & Sailing to Edfu

   After breakfast, cross to the West Bank. Pause at the Colossi of Memnon, then visit the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari, rising in three colonnaded terraces against the cliff face.
5. Day 5 Edfu, Kom Ombo & Sailing to Aswan

   After breakfast, visit the Temple of Horus at Edfu, the most complete temple standing in Egypt — its roof, columns and sanctuary intact, with the temple library's inscriptions still legible on the walls.
6. Day 6 Aswan: Unfinished Obelisk & Philae Temple

   After breakfast, visit the Unfinished Obelisk lying in its granite quarry, still attached to the bedrock that cracked beneath it — the clearest surviving evidence of how Egypt's monoliths were cut. Continue by motorboat to Philae Temple, relocated to Agilika Island and dedicated to Isis and Hathor.
7. Day 7 Transfer to Lake Nasser & Embarkation

   A final breakfast aboard the MS Salacia before disembarking. Transfer to the M/S Prince Abbas, your second vessel, moored on Lake Nasser above the High Dam.
8. Day 8 Kalabsha, Beit El Wali & Sailing to Wadi El Seboua

   Go ashore at New Kalabsha, the island where three monuments were reassembled after the dam flooded their original sites: the great Temple of Kalabsha, the rock-cut Temple of Beit El Wali with its painted battle reliefs, and the delicate Kiosk of Kertassi standing on the shore.
9. Day 9 Wadi El Seboua, Dakka, Meharakka & Amada

   Ashore at Wadi El Seboua, where the avenue of sphinxes that gives the site its name leads to the temple of Ramesses II — and where two further temples, Dakka and Meharakka, were relocated alongside it.
10. Day 10 Kasr Ibrim & Abu Simbel from the Water

    The vessel slows at Kasr Ibrim, the only Nubian site still standing where it was built — a fortress city on what was once a clifftop, now an island, and viewable only from the deck. You cannot land here; the stop is roughly fifteen minutes.
11. Day 11 Abu Simbel to Cairo

    A final breakfast aboard with the temples beside you, then disembark for the road journey back to Aswan — roughly three and a half hours across the Nubian desert.
12. Day 12 Departure from Cairo

    Enjoy breakfast and a relaxed final morning. Depending on your flight time, luggage storage can be arranged at the hotel should you wish to spend a few last hours in the city.