Travel

Egypt: A Trip, Not a Tour

An occasional section, only when I have something real to share. This week: Egypt, from a recent trip.

Sleep: Marriott Mena House, Giza

The pyramids rise over the hotel gardens: you have breakfast looking at 4,500 years of history. Highly recommend it.

Sail: the Nile Adventurer, an A&K Sanctuary

Four nights between Luxor and Aswan aboard a 32-cabin riverboat with an Egyptologist on board, the ship Harvard Alumni Travel uses on its Egypt & the Nile program, and the one I sailed on. See the ship →

The route, Upper to Lower Egypt (south to north): Aswan: the granite quarries and Philae Temple, saved stone by stone from the rising Nile. Kom Ombo: the double temple, half for the crocodile god Sobek, half for Horus the falcon. Edfu: the best-preserved temple in Egypt, a Ptolemaic time capsule. Luxor: Karnak’s forest of columns and the Luxor Temple glowing at dusk. Side excursion: Abu Simbel: Ramses II’s colossi, moved in the 1960s to escape Lake Nasser.

From my camera roll, nine stops that stayed with me.

Insure: Ripcord by Redpoint

I used this insurance on my recent trip to Egypt. Up to $1M in medical evacuation, search-and-rescue coverage, trip cancellation and interruption, with a cancel-for-any-reason option. redpointtravelprotection.com/plan/ripcord/

Flavio’s take: Egypt is a trip, not a tour, go with a good ship, good insurance, a good guide, and a hotel where the pyramids are the wallpaper. I took the Harvard family trip, Egypt & the Nile Family Adventure, and it delivered.