..:TourandLeisure.com::.

DAY 1 CAIRO
Upon arrival in Cairo, you will be met by FLO Tours Egypt's representative and escorted to your private Mercedes Benz and transferred to your hotel for overnight.

DAY 2 CAIRO
Your private Egyptologist / tour guide and driver will pick you up and start your tour. Drive to Giza and visit the Pyramids. See the Great Pyramid, a Royal Burial Chamber, the Valley Temple, and the Sphinx. Then visit the Solar Boat, one of the most amazing Pharaonic discoveries. Continue to Memphis, capital of the Pharaohs during the Old Kingdom. Visit the recumbent statue of Ramesses II and the 80-ton Alabaster Sphinx. Lunch en route. Continue to Sakara to see the prototype of the Pyramids, the Step Pyramid, built for the 3rd Dynasty Pharaoh Djoser by the exalted architect Imhotep. Return to Cairo and visit the Papyrus Institute on the way to your hotel for overnight.

DAY 3 CAIRO
You will be met at your hotel by your guide and driver. Drive to the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities for a detailed, private guided tour. Among other fascinating exhibits, see the treasures of the Tomb of Tutankhamen and the extraordinary Mummies Room. Over ten mummies, including that of Ramesses II, are displayed in freestanding glass cases in this climate-controlled room. Walk around the mummies and examine them from all angles, gaze into their incredibly well preserved 3000-year-old faces. Leave the museum and enter Old Cairo and walk back in time. Visit the Old Coptic Church and the Ben Ezra Synagogue. Lunch en route. Continue to the Mohamad Ali Mosque and the streets of Khan el Khalili Bazaar. Return to your hotel for overnight. Enjoy dinner in view of the illuminated Pyramids.

DAY 4 NILE CRUISE (Aswan)
You will be transferred to Cairo airport for your very early flight to Aswan.
In Aswan, connect to your flight to Abu Simbel. Visit the awesome twin temples of Ramesses II and his queen Nefertari with their facades of colossal statues.
In the early 1960's, by a prodigious feat of engineering and international cooperation, the entire temple complex was dismantled stone by stone and reassembled 90 feet above its original site in order to save it from the rising waters caused by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Fly back to Aswan. Upon arrival, you will be transferred to your Nile cruise for lunch. In the afternoon, take a tour of Aswan High Dam, Egypt's contemporary example of building on a monumental scale. Next, proceed to the granite quarries which supplied the ancient Egyptians with most of the hard stone used in pyramids and temples. The quarries still hold the Unfinished Obelisk, possibly intended as a companion to the Lateran Obelisk, originally at Karnak but now in Rome. It would have weighed over 1,100 tons and would have been the world's largest piece of stone ever handled. Continue by a short motor-boat ride to the Temple of Philae on the island of Agilka. The temple was dedicated to Isis, sister/wife of Osiris and patroness of the Ptolemaic rule. Dinner and overnight on-board the cruise.

DAY 5 NILE CRUISE (Kom Ombo-Edfu)
Sail to Kom Ombo. After breakfast on board, visit the Temple of Sobek, the crocodile-headed god of fertility and creator of the world. The temple stands at a bend in the Nile where, in ancient times, sacred crocodiles basked in the sun on the riverbank. Return to your cruise and sail to Edfu. After Lunch on board, set out by horse-drawn carriage to visit the Temple of Horus, the most perfectly preserved of all the Nile temples. Horus, also known as Haroeris, was the falcon-headed solar war god. Sail to Esna. Then cross the lock and sail to Luxor for dinner and overnight.

DAY 6 NILE CRUISE (Luxor)
After breakfast onboard, cross to the West Bank of the Nile and visit the wondrous Valley of the Kings, a vast city of the dead where the magnificent tombs of 62 pharaohs have been discovered. The tombs were carved deep into the desert rock, richly decorated and filled with treasures for the afterlife of the pharaohs. Visit several of the tombs. Next, visit the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. This beautiful monument to the reign of the only female pharaoh rises out of the desert plain in a series of terraces and merges with the sheer limestone cliffs that surround it. On the way back to your Nile cruise, stop at the famed Colossi of Memnon, two 66ft, 1 thousand ton statues of Amenhotep III. These colossal statures were known by the ancient Greeks to emit haunting voices at dawn. Though damaged by nature and ancient tourists, the statues are still impressive. Lunch, then to the north of Luxor visit Karnak Temple, called by some "the Temple of Temples." It is the largest place of worship ever built. Its ancient name Ipet-isut means "the most sacred of places." The temple, or, more correctly, the complex of temples, was built over more than two thousand years by generation after generation of pharaohs. Within the complex, the great "Hypostyle Hall" is an incredible forest of giant pillars covering an area larger than the whole of Notre Dame Cathedral. Proceed to the graceful Temple of Luxor built by Amenhotep III and Ramesses II for ritual and festivals and dedicated to the god Amun. Dinner and overnight on-board the cruise.