One Week in Egypt: The Ultimate Itinerary | Full Itinerary & Guide

Hey everyone, welcome back to my YouTube channel. If you're new to my channel, my name is Erin and I've been traveling internationally for a decade and have been to almost 40 countries around the world. In today's video, I'm going to highlight the best things to do and places to visit for your trip to Egypt if you're planning to visit and stay for about a week. If you're like me growing up, Egypt has always invoked this sense of wonder and vision to ancient mummies and pyramids, so I was very excited when I finally got the chance to visit Egypt with my best friend. I recommend spending your first two full days in Cairo and Giza to see all the major sites before you head to other parts of Egypt. On our first full day, we spent most of the morning wandering around the downtown part of Cairo. We ended up making our way to the popular district of Zamalek, which is in the heart of Cairo and where the Cairo Tower is located. You can also find the Cairo Opera House, numerous art galleries, and museums in this district. You can also find on Saturdays the Zamalek Market, which includes a farmer's and artisan market. We did decide last minute to go to the top of the Cairo Tower, which costs around 200 Egyptian pounds. It has the best 360 degree view of Cairo, and you can even catch a glimpse of the pyramids, which was our first time seeing them on our trip, so we were very excited. You don't need to buy your ticket in advance, you can just show up, buy your ticket, and ride the elevator 62 floors to the top. There is a cafe at the top if you're hungry and want to take in the view. On our first night in Cairo, we booked a food tour with a local guide, who was going to take us around to three different parts of Cairo to try different foods and beverages. I highly recommend doing this on your first night, it gives you the chance to learn about the different foods you might eat throughout your week, and gives you the chance to meet with a local guide to ask any questions you have about Cairo and Egypt in general. I'll link to our tour we did in the description below. Day two was a very early one for us, we were planning to spend the day going to Cairo and visa's popular sites with a private tour guide that we hired. First stop on the day was Great Pyramid to Giza. Need I say more that this is one of the truly most incredible experiences and such a major bucket list for anyone visiting Egypt. If I had just one recommendation to give you for visiting the pyramids, it would be to get to the pyramids as early as possible in the morning. This will give you the best chance to enjoy these wonders before the big tour buses and groups come later in the morning. Even the vendors we set up for the day around the pyramids were just getting set up for the day when we got there, which meant we had less people coming up to us to try to sell us things. I also recommend getting a guide, it's a great way to take the hassle out of getting around to the different pyramids and you'll likely have a guide very well versed in the history of the pyramids and be able to answer all of your questions. Having a guide might also help deter some of the people trying to sell you some things when you're at the pyramid and they're also there to just provide overall tips and recommendations about making the experience more enjoyable. You can also pretty easily ahead of your trip find tours that you'd like to go on to the pyramids on Viator, Get Your Guide, even Airbnb experiences. My friend and I did a private full day tour of Cairo and Giza and lunch for around $50 a person. You also have the opportunity to purchase a ticket for the light and sound show that takes place at the pyramids in the evening. It is a unique way to learn about the pyramids and Egyptian history with a cool light display on the pyramids and the sphinx itself. We so happened to be at a restaurant one evening to watch the sunset via the sphinx so we got to see the first part of it and it is a cool experience to have but also a little cheesy at the same time. Next, we were headed to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. When we went to Egypt, the new grand Egyptian museum in Giza was not yet open so our tour guide recommended this one instead because it had a lot of great artifacts and mummies to see and learn about. We had a really great time and highly recommend this museum. Our last and final stop of the day was at the well-known bazaar and historic center of Cairo, Khan al-Khalili. I highly recommend you stop here at least once during your trip and you'll be able to find all sorts of stands to find a souvenir or two for yourself and your family and friends at home. If you come to this bazaar, you're also right next door to the oldest street in Cairo which dates back all the way to the 10th century. I'll put the name on the screen so I don't horribly butcher it but it was truly one of my favorite places to explore in Cairo. It has some of the most beautiful architecture that I saw in Egypt and it's an exciting bustling street to explore. For day three and four of our trip, we headed to Luxor, Egypt. They really don't call Luxor an open-air museum for nothing. You truly won't be disappointed at the number of historical statues, tombs, and temples you can see here. Now there are a few ways to get to Luxor from Cairo. We took a one-hour plane ride because given the limited time we had, we thought it was worth the extra cost to fly. You can also save a little bit of money and take the overnight train. You can also get to Luxor if you're on a Nile River cruise which will likely stop in Luxor as well. When we were in Luxor, we stayed at the Hotel Pavilion Winter Luxor. This hotel shares the same grounds and pool with the famous Winter Palace Luxor which has seen famous guests over the years including Winston Churchill, Jackie Kennedy, even Prince Charles and Princess Diana and Agatha Christie who wrote Death on the Nile. I would highly recommend this place, it's such a great experience and the gardens are breathtaking and the pool is very relaxing after some long days exploring. Luxor is also known for its beautiful hot air balloons that take off early in the morning over the Nile. We didn't go into balloons ourselves but we did get up early to see the hot air balloons over Luxor. I couldn't recommend this more, it's quite peaceful in the morning and getting to see the hot air balloons across the Nile while the sun slowly creeps over the horizon is truly incredible and nothing quite like it. Two days in Luxor is going to go by very quickly so here are the few things that we did in two days in Luxor. We went to the Luxor Temple, Karnak Temple, Valley of the Kings, and the Temple of Hatshepsut. I'll leave the link in my description for the full list of recommendations for Luxor in my travel blog, The Scenic Route Traveler. However, I highly recommend getting a guide to take you around all the different places that you want to. The Luxor Temple and the Karnak Temple are the easiest to walk to if you're staying on the east side of the Nile in Luxor, but the other places I mentioned are around a 45 minute drive away from the main part of Luxor. So having a guide to take you around and also teach you about everything that you're learning is a very invaluable experience to have in Luxor. I also recommend starting your tour early in the morning. We got to the Karnak Temple around 7.30am with our guide and it was only us and a few other tourists and a random British film crew filming a documentary at the temple walking around. So start your day early for tours in Luxor and pretty much most other popular places to visit around the world. Something to keep in mind when you're visiting Valley of the Kings is that with your ticket you can only go into three separate tombs. There are more tombs than that that you can visit, but I'd recommend asking your guide which of the three tombs they recommend that you visit when you're visiting Valley of the Kings. For days five and six of your trip, I recommend heading to Aswan, Egypt. The most popular way to get to Aswan from Luxor is by train or private car. Hiring a private car might cost you around $100-$200 USD but will get you there in around three or four hours in a comfortable car. We decided to save money and take the train which costs around $2 per ticket USD. The train takes about three hours, but the trains in Egypt are known not to be on time a good portion of the time. We waited about an hour and a half for the train to arrive after it said it would. I really enjoyed my time in Aswan, it's a bit slower paced and a little less touristy than Luxor but still has plenty to do in two days. Admittedly, this point in the trip my friend and I had gotten a bit sick from something we ate so we didn't get to explore as much of Aswan as we were hoping to, but what we did see we really liked. If you're hoping to see the Philae Temple in a Nubian village, I recommend getting a tour guide for both. They can help with transportation to and from your hotel and the docks to get a boat to each place you need to go. The Philae Temple was probably my favorite temple to visit when I was in Egypt. It's located on this small island in the Nile River. It was actually located on another small island, but because of the rising water levels, it was moved piece by piece to a new island with higher grounds back in 1971. You can also visit a Nubian village located along the banks of the Nile River. The Nubian villages are painted with bright colors and inhabited by Nubians. They speak their own Nubian languages and have specific traditions that are different from the rest of Egypt. Their origins go back to Sudan when they traveled to the south of Egypt for farming along the Nile River. I recommend getting a guide to take you to the village and teach you about the history of the Nubian people and villages. I'll put a link to my travel blog with the full list of things to do in Aswan. If we had been feeling a little bit better, we probably also would have gone to the Aswan Botanical Gardens and the unfinished obelisk near Aswan. You can also turn your second day into a long day trip to Abu Simbel, which is about a three hour drive from Aswan. So it can be done in a day, but just know you'll spend quite a bit of time in the car in one day. If you are in Egypt for a few extra days, it might be worth staying the night there so you can get up early to see the Abu Simbel temples. If you have to get back to Cairo from Aswan, I recommend taking a flight. It's quick and easy and you save a lot of time instead of taking the train all the way back to Cairo. On our seventh day of the trip, we were back in Cairo. We started our day at the Muhammad Ali Mosque. This mosque is at the top of the hill in Cairo with incredible views of the city. The cost to enter the grounds is 180 Egyptian pounds. Next head over to the Al-Sazar Park. This was one of my favorite places to go when I was in Cairo. It's a quiet, beautiful park that allows you the chance to see stunning views of the city and surrounding neighborhoods. Tickets are just 30 Egyptian pounds, which makes it a very affordable thing to do in Cairo. If there's one dish you need to try and place to try it at, it's the national dish of Egypt, koshary. The dish consists of Egyptian rice, lentils, macaroni noodles with a spicy tomato chili sauce sprinkled with crispy onion. We were recommended to try koshary at Abu Tariq in Cairo. On our last evening, we decided to go to the pyramids one last time and watch the sunset. Originally we were torn on whether to go to one of the nice restaurants with the nicer hotels near the pyramids or a smaller, likely more touristy restaurant with okay food but a nice rooftop. We decided on the latter and ended up being one of the best decisions of the trip. We picked a restaurant right in front of the Sphinx where you end up having a great view of all the pyramids and the Sphinx together. And when I say this might have been the best sunset experience I've ever had, I'm not kidding. I hope you found this video to be helpful for the planning stage of getting ready to go to Egypt or to inspire you to book the ticket to Egypt. There are so many other amazing places that we just didn't have the chance to get to. I'll add a few other spots to the description box below. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and hit the subscribe button for more travel related videos. You can also read more about my other adventures around the world on my travel blog, Scenic Rock Traveler. And happy adventures.