8 Days in Egypt: What You Can Actually See

Eight days is the most-booked length on this site, and the difference between it and seven is not another sight. It is room.

Seven days works, but every day is committed. Eight has one day that is not, and that day absorbs a delayed flight, a stomach upset, a morning when nobody wants to get up at five, or a second visit to something you liked.

What eight days covers

Three days in Cairo rather than two. That is enough for the Giza plateau, a full day at the Grand Egyptian Museum, and a third day that can go to Saqqara and Dahshur, or to Islamic and Coptic Cairo, or to the Egyptian Museum on Tahrir, which still holds a great deal despite the move.

Then a four-night cruise from Aswan to Luxor — Philae, Kom Ombo, Edfu — and two full days in Luxor for both banks.

Several of our eight-day trips use the spare day for Abu Simbel. This is the shortest length at which that stops being a trade.

What still gets left out

The Red Sea, still. Adding Hurghada or Sharm el-Sheikh to eight days means three or four days of beach against four of sightseeing, which is a different holiday. Ten days is where both fit.

Alexandria, the Western Desert and Middle Egypt. All are real trips in their own right rather than add-ons.

The quiet Luxor west bank sites, unless you deliberately choose them over the famous ones.

Who eight days suits

• Anyone flying long-haul who wants the trip to feel like a holiday rather than an operation.
• Families, where the spare day is not optional.
• First-time visitors who would rather see the standard list unhurried than a longer list at speed.
• Anyone who wants Abu Simbel without giving something up for it.

The seventeen eight-day trips we run

The last one is the outlier: it splits the eight days between two countries, so it is roughly a four-day Egypt trip with Dubai attached.