Writing this as I’m awaiting \~24 hours in flights back to the states. Just spent two weeks in Jordan/Egypt but wanted to post about Egypt specifically because of the consistently awful things I’ve read about it on Reddit before coming here. Wife and I had a phenomenal time!
The caveat is we used a tour company for the trip and I think that’s a must-have when coming here. It helped with at least some of the vendors and made it a breeze to get around to the most impressive sites between Cairo/Luxor/Aswan.
We had 10 days in total in these cities and going down the Nile and it was absolutely breathtaking. The Pyramids have been the bucket list item for me and they didn’t disappoint in the slightest! Being able to go inside the Great Pyramid, tour the Valley of the Kings, explore soooo many temples between Karnak, Abu Simbel, Hapshetsut’s temple, etc was incredible and sailing down the Nile while exploring was next level.
From a vendor perspective, yes, they were annoying but we just kept walking and moving and they left us alone pretty quickly. Engaging with them is what lead to more attempts for sales and getting past your “no”, but if we found just continuing to walk and not engaging at all made them leave us alone quickly.
Now with the tour group we had a jam packed schedule and didnt really go exploring at night or into places of the cities we weren’t familiar with but im guessing that’s where the majority of the negative experiences are for folks. We wouldnt have done this trip without a tour group even though we usually book and do everything on our own for every other trip. Im glad we did as it gave the best experience possible.
Anyways, wanted to share some photos, our experience and our opinion that tour groups are the way to go for Egypt. We absolutely loved this trip and it became one of our favorites of all time!