7 Day Itinerary?

As you plan to visit Egypt for only seven days I suggest spending at least two days each in and around Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan.

In Cairo I would arrange for a taxi excursion of about five or six hours to visit the pyramids at Giza and the temple ruins at Saqqara. Next day I would visit the Egyptian Natonal Museaum in Cairo, the Mosque of Mohamed Ali, and the market area in the old section of Cairo, taking separate taxis between those three places.

From Cairo it would be convenient to fly to Luxor. Spend the first day in town to visit the Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple., and take a walk around town. The next day take a boat across the Nile and take a taxi excursion to visit the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens.

Then I would fly from Luxor to Aswan. In Aswan be sure to visit the beautiful museum and get a felluca to take you to the island with the botanical garden and tlhen continue to the other side of the Nile to take a camel ride for fifteen minutes or so to visit the monastery.
The following day I would visit the Aswan High Dam and the beautiful Temple on an island (whose names I do not recall at the moment), and take a walk around town. An option would be to take a flying excursion from Aswan to the temples at Abu Simbal, which are very impressive but the flights are expensive for so short a visit. Then fly back to Cairo.

I invite you to visit the "Jordan & Egypt secton of our website www.evcal.org</a> which contains detailed descriptions and photos of the places mentioned above.

I agree with the above itinerary. I did about the same when I traveled in Egypt.

However, I took overnight trains instead of flying. They will save you some money, they don't eat away too much of your day, but I did not sleep well. It's a time versus money issue.

In Aswan, I booked an Abu Simbel tour through my hostel in Aswan. We left in a convoy at 3:30am to go to Abu Simbel and arrived back in Aswan in the late afternoon. It was a long day, but transport was only 55LE each. On the way back to Aswan we saw the Temple of Philae and the Aswan High Dam. You definitely cannot miss Abu Simbel and the Temple of Philae if you are in Aswan. I think I liked them more than the pyramids even.

Also, in Cairo, I enjoyed tacking on a trip to Darshur along with Giza and Saqqara. It's just a little further south and shouldn't add much more to the cost. The site was almost completely empty and I got some great photos of the Red Pyramid without busloads of tourists around. Another bonus is that you can climb inside the Red Pyramid for no additional charge like you have to pay in Giza. They are all pretty much the same on the inside after all.