SEPTEMBER 29 TO OCTOBER 8, 2023

Click here to see our October 8-17, 2023 itinerary

ITINERARY

cairo · privately chartered Nile river cruise · giza

10 days From $8999

ITINERARY

Day 1
Welcome to Cairo! 

Upon arrival in Cairo airport, where your Tour Coordinator will meet you before immigration and transfer you to your hotel.

Welcome cocktail: Today we gather at the Hotel for welcome reception, hot and cold canapés will be served.

Welcome dinner: Welcome dinner at the Hotel  

Accommodations: Four Seasons Hotel Cairo at The First Residence, Deluxe - Room
Meals Included: Welcome Dinner

Day 2
Breakfast, included at our hotel

Egyptian Museum, Islamic & Bazaar - Full Day

Egyptian Museum: You'll tour 7,000 years of history at this museum which houses the largest collection of ancient Egyptian art in the world. Don't miss the treasures of the boy-king Tutankhamun, including his gold mask, the solid gold sarcophagus that held his mummy, and his beautiful throne.

Khan El Khalili: The fascinating Khan El-Khalili Bazaar is reputed to be the largest bazaar in the Middle East. Originally founded as a watering stop for caravanserai in the 14th century, the bazaar has now grown to vast proportions.  As one wanders through the labyrinth of narrow streets you will find workshops and stalls selling all manner of things from woodwork, glassware and leather goods to perfumes, fabrics and Pharaonic curiosities.

Lunch at Naguib Mahfouz restaurant: Located in the heart of the Khan El Khalili Bazaar, this restaurant is named after Egypt's Nobel Prize-winning novelist, and it's a convenient, air-conditioned place to take a break from shopping. The coffee shop at the entrance offers drinks, snacks and shisha (water pipes), while the restaurant section offers a selection of chicken, meats and mouth-watering Middle Eastern mezzas. No alcohol is served.

Citadel: Perched high on limestone hills above Cairo, the Citadel is a medieval fortress built by Salah El Din (Saladin) in 1176 to protect the city from Crusaders. The Citadel has always had a military use, and was expanded over the centuries by Egypt's rulers who often resided there. Today, the Citadel complex has mosques and museums, including the National Military Museum.

Mosque of Sultan Hassan: With its grand, soaring architecture and rich decoration, the Mosque of Sultan Hassan, completed in 1363, is one of the finest in Egypt. In recesses around its open courtyard, each of the four schools of Sunni Islam was taught to students, and in its mausoleum, Sultan Hassan's sons are buried.

Refaie Mosque: Next to the Mosque of Sultan Hassan, you'll view the much newer Refaie Mosque, completed in 1912 with well-preserved, colorful decoration. Buried in tombs here are a Muslim saint, a companion of the Prophet Mohamed, Egypt's last royal family and the last Shah of Iran.

Accommodations: Four Seasons Hotel Cairo at The First Residence, Deluxe - Room
Meals Included: Breakfast and lunch

Day 3
Breakfast, included at our hotel

Aswan  

Your Tour Coordinator will escort you to Cairo International Airport by air-conditioned Vehicle to board you flight to Aswan.  Note:  Zoom Vacations will coordinate this flight and will advise the price at the time of flight purchase.

Arrival: At Aswan Airport where your Tour Coordinator will meet you and take you to our beautiful hotel, the Hotel Sofitel Legend Old Cataract Aswan.

Afternoon at leisure to enjoy the hotel and the markets of Aswan.

Accommodations: Hotel Sofitel Legend Old Cataract Aswan
Meals Included: Breakfast

Day 4
Breakfast, included at our hotel

Optional Abu Simbel Excursion. Enjoy a half-day tour to the Temple at Abu Simbel. Built by the Great Ramses II, Egypt’s longest ruling pharaoh, it is one of the most recognizable images in the country. Actually two temples, namely the Great Temple of Ra-Harakhte, fronted by the four colossal statues of Ramses II and the Temple of Hathor, dedicated to Ramses’ favorite wife Queen Nefertari, they were moved by the United Nations to their current location when the creation of Lake Nasser threatened their existence.

Transfer: Transfer by air-conditioned vehicle to Sanctuary Zein Nile Chateau, our privately chartered historic yacht.

Check-in on board the Sanctuary Zein Nile Chateau followed by lunch on board. 

Today we will see the following sites:

1. Philae Temple

According to the Ancient Egyptians, the goddess Isis traveled all over Egypt gathering her husband Osiris’s remains after he was cut to pieces by his evil brother. On Philae Island, where she found his heart, the Egyptians built a sacred temple to Isis, goddess of purity, sexuality, nature and protection. During the building of the High Dam, Philae Island was submerged by water, so UNESCO helped transport the temple complex to nearby Agilika Island, where you see it today.

2. Unfinished Obelisk

Visit this massive obelisk, which was abandoned in Aswan’s Northern Quarry when a crack was found as it was being carved from the red granite. Tools left behind show how builders accomplished such great work. 

Sail to Kom Ombo
Afternoon visit to Kom Ombo Temple

In this Ptolemaic temple shared by two gods, Sobek and Horus the Elder, everything is duplicated symmetrically, with double hallways, doors and chambers.

Afternoon tea and dinner on board

Overnight in Kom Ombo

Accommodations: Sanctuary Zein Nile Chateau exclusive charter
Meals Included: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Day 5
Breakfast onboard

Edfu temple

Breakfast on board while sailing to Temple of Horus and then on to Edfu.

Afternoon visit to Edfu temple

Explore the largest and most completely preserved Pharaonic – albeit Greek-built – temple in Egypt, the extraordinary Temple of Horus at Edfu.

Afternoon tea and dinner on board

Overnight in Esna

Accommodations: Sanctuary Zein Nile Chateau exclusive charter
Meals Included: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Day 6
Esna and Luxor temple

Breakfast onboard

Morning visit to Esna Temple

Visit the Greco-Roman Temple of Khnum at Esna. The beautifully preserved Great Hypostyle Hall was built during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius; it was excavated from the silt that had accumulated through centuries of annual Nile floods and is about nine meters below present-day street level.

Lunch on board while sailing to Luxor

Afternoon visit to Luxor Temple

Visit the strikingly graceful Temple of Luxor dedicated to the god Amun. Proceed to the Temple of Luxor, once connected to Karnak via the Avenue of Sphinxes, almost 3 kilometers in length. Built by Amenhotep III in 1380 BC, the site was added to by later pharaohs. The temple enjoyed many celebrations, the most important being the Festival of Opet which lasted almost a month.

Optional visit

Dinner on board

Accommodations: Sanctuary Zein Nile Chateau exclusive charter
Meals Included: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner
 

Day 7
Luxor

Optional Hot Air Balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings

Breakfast on board

Morning visit to the Valley of the Kings

Explore the Valley of the Kings, a vast City of the Dead where magnificent tombs were carved into the desert rocks, decorated richly, and filled with treasures for the afterlife by generations of Pharaohs. 

Visit to the West Bank, with a choice of three from the below:

1. Valley of the Queens

There are between 75 and 80 tombs in the Valley of the Queens, or Biban al-Harim.  These belong to Queens of the 18th, 19th and 20th Dynasties. It is called “Place of Beauty” by the Egyptians, where the pharaohs’ wives and children were buried.

2. Hatshepsut Temple

Rising out of the desert plain in a series of terraces, the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut (Ancient Egypt’s only female Pharaoh) merges with the sheer limestone cliffs that surround it, as if nature herself had built this extraordinary monument.
 
3. Valley of Workers (Deir El Medina)

Visit the remains of the self-contained village on the West Bank where the workmen who built the kings’ and queens’ tombs lived in mud brick houses with their families. The site gives archeologists a view of how urban people lived in ancient Egypt. You can also visit the tombs that the workmen created for themselves, to admire the art in ordinary people’s tombs. Nearby is the Temple of Deir El Medina, from Ptolemaic times.

4. Tombs of the Nobles

On the West Bank sit 400 tombs of Theban aristocrats, some of which you can enter. The tomb walls were white-washed and painted with murals of the nobles’ daily lives, making them quite different from royal tombs, where relief work focused on judgment and resurrection. Since the tombs were not sealed, some have deteriorated.

5. Medinet Habu

The magnificent Medinet Habu is a series of temples built by the Pharaoh Ramses III (1182-1151 BC) and second only to Karnak Temple in size and complexity. The most impressive is the Mortuary Temple of Ramses III, decorated with relief work depicting his many military victories. With its massive mud brick enclosure that held storehouses, workshops, administrative offices, and residences of priests and officials, Medinet Habu grew into a city that maintained its population well into Coptic times.

6. Ramesseum Temple

The Ramesseum, the Mortuary Temple of Ramses II, was built early in the great pharaoh’s reign and was 20 years in the making. Here you’ll see the broken, awesome Colossus of Ramses II, a 1000 ton statue in which the fingers alone are over 1 meter long; it inspired the famous poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. This great temple reportedly rivaled the wonders of Ramses II’s temple at Abu Simbel.

Afternoon visit to the Karnak Temple

Visit the Temple of Karnak, built over more than a thousand years by generations of Pharaohs.  The great Hypostyle Hall is an incredible forest of giant pillars, covering an area larger than the whole of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Afternoon tea and dinner on board

Overnight in Luxor

Accommodations: Sanctuary Zein Nile Chateau exclusive charter
Meals Included: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Day 8
Breakfast buffet on board and check out at 8:00 AM.

Transfer by air-conditioned vehicle to Luxor Airport to board you flight to Cairo

Arrival: At Cairo International Airport, where your Tour Coordinator will meet and escort you to your hotel in Giza.

Accommodations: Mena House Hotel - Garden, Premier Pyramid View
Meals Included: Breakfast
 

Day 9
Breakfast, included at our hotel

Memphis, Sakkara, Great Pyramids, and the Sphinx

Memphis: The legendary city of Memphis was founded in 3100 BC by Menes, the Pharaoh who united Upper and Lower Egypt. It became the capital of the Old Kingdom, a center for religion with a huge temple to the god Ptah, and the heart of Egypt's busy import-export activity, with traders from around the world giving it a cosmopolitan atmosphere.

Sakkara: Sakkara was the necropolis (cemetery) for the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis and the place where the very first pyramids were built as tombs for kings, not with smooth sides, but with six steps on the outside representing the pharaoh's stepladder to heaven. Here you'll see the famous Step Pyramid of King Zoser, the first pyramid ever built and the world's oldest freestanding stone structure. You will also admire the beautiful tomb art at Sakkara, which gives great insight into the lives of the ancient Egyptians.

Lunch overlooking the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

Pyramids and Sphinx: The Great Pyramids of Giza are the only present-day survivors of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, built about 4500 years ago as giant tombs for the mummies of the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, who were a father, son and grandson. (Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus are the Greek forms of their names.) In the ancient Egyptian religion, the sides of the pyramids were likened to sun rays on which the Pharaoh ascended to heaven. The pyramids are truly monumental in scale, with the largest, Khufu's, made of over 2 million blocks. The pyramids were not built by slaves but by Egyptian peasants who paid their taxes to the Pharaoh through this labor, and were fed, clothed and housed by him.

Nearby sits the enigmatic Sphinx with the body of a lion and the face of a man wearing a royal head cloth, which workers may have based on King Khafre to guard his enormous funerary monument. About a thousand years after the Sphinx was built it was covered in sand until a young prince had a dream in which the Sphinx told him that if he cleared the sand away, he would become Pharaoh. This story is told on the "Dream Stela" that was placed between the Sphinx's paws by King Tuthmose IV.

Until next time dinner

Accommodations: Mena House Hotel - Garden, Premier Pyramid View
Meals Included: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Day 10
Breakfast, included at our hotel

Departure

Transfer: Your Tour Coordinator will escort you to Cairo International Airport by air-conditioned Vehicle.

Meals Included: Breakfast

Pricing and Cabin Options

Note:  Pricing includes 2 nights at the Four Seasons in Cairo, 1 night at the Hotel Sofitel Legend Old Cataract Aswan, and 2 nights at the Mena House in Giza.  However, the entire package price can be found below and varies depending on which cruise cabin you select.

$8255 per person in THE BALADI CABIN (20M²) based on double occupancy.

Highlighting Egypt's culture and artistic world, the Baladi cabin, with king bed, chronicles famous artists and singers. Be transported back into Egypt's artistic heyday.  Note: Single occupancy price is $14,225.

Air: International and domestic airfare not included.

Passports: Your valid passport should have at least two blank visa pages and should be valid for at least six months after your planned departure from the country you are visiting. 
Note: Passport pages titled "Endorsement Pages" are not visa pages.

While Zoom Vacations will assist when possible, please note that passport, visa, and vaccination requirements vary from country to country and are the sole responsibility of the traveler. If you are a US resident, you may click here for more information on passport, visa, and vaccination requirements for various countries.

*Land only Introductory rate, based on double occupancy. Prices are subject to change. Need a roommate? Zoom Vacations® is happy to match you with someone, at no additional charge. Or, you may pay a single supplement and go as a single.

Please read Terms and Conditions prior to booking.

For more information on entry and exit requirements, see here.