A Week in Egypt That Won't Wreck Your Bank Account

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I went to Egypt expecting to be exhausted by it. Everyone warned me. Too much walking, too many touts, too much sun. Some of that was true. But the part nobody mentioned was how easy the country is to see in a short stretch if you plan the order of things sensibly and don’t try to cram the whole of it into one trip. Seven days is enough to leave feeling like you saw something real, provided you’re honest with yourself about what you can skip.

The mistake most people make is treating Cairo, the Nile, and the Red Sea as one continuous blur. They aren’t. Cairo is loud and grey and full of history stacked on top of history. Luxor and Aswan feel slower, more like a river town that happens to have three thousand years of ruins in the backyard. The coast is a different holiday entirely. Trying to do all of it in a week is possible, but you’ll spend half your time in transit and the other half apologising to yourself for booking such a tight schedule.

Deciding what actually goes in the plan

My advice is to pick two anchors and build around them. For most first-timers that means Cairo plus one other region. If you want temples and the river, fly south to Luxor. If you want to lie down and stop moving, head for the coast. The flights inside the country are short and cheaper than you’d think, which changes the math a lot. When I was sorting out my own route I leaned heavily on a ready-made egypt itinerary 7 days long and then cut the two stops I knew I wouldn’t enjoy. That saved me from the usual trap of adding things because they’re famous rather than because I wanted to see them.

A rough shape that works: two or three days in and around Cairo, a domestic flight, then three or four days wherever your second anchor is. Giza and the Egyptian Museum will eat a full day each if you let them, and you should let them. The pyramids in particular are worth going early for, before the coaches arrive and the light gets flat. I got there at opening and had a good twenty minutes near the Sphinx that felt almost private, which is not a thing that happens at eleven in the morning.

Why the coast is worth a few days

If you go with the Red Sea as your second anchor, you’ll understand quickly why so many people never leave the resort. The reef starts a few metres off the beach in places. You can snorkel from the shore and see more in an hour than most people see on a whole diving trip elsewhere. The water stays warm well into the shoulder seasons, so you’re not locked into the summer crowds. A lot of the appeal of sharm el sheikh holidays comes down to that simple fact: the good stuff is close, and you don’t need a boat or a licence to reach it.

That said, the coast is where I’d push back on the all-inclusive habit. The hotel buffet is fine. It is also the same buffet everywhere. Getting out to a local fish place, even once, is the difference between remembering the food and forgetting it entirely. Naama Bay has its share of tourist-trap restaurants, but a short walk past the obvious ones usually turns up somewhere run by people who actually cook. Ask the staff at your hotel where they eat, not where they send guests. Those are two different answers.

Where the money actually goes

Egypt can be done on almost any budget, and the range is wider than in most places I’ve visited. You can stay in a five-star resort with a private beach, or in a family guesthouse for a fraction of that, and both are entirely normal choices. The reason cheap holidays to egypt exist in the first place is that the local cost of living is low and competition among operators is fierce, especially outside peak weeks. Book in the shoulder months and you’ll pay noticeably less for the same room.

The costs that catch people out are the small, repeated ones. Tipping is expected almost everywhere, for almost everything, and it adds up if you’re not carrying small notes. Entrance tickets to the big sites are separate and not always cheap, particularly the extras like going inside a specific tomb or the burial chamber of a pyramid. Decide in advance which of those add-ons you care about, because paying for all of them adds a real sum to the week. I skipped a couple and didn’t regret it. I paid for the one tomb I’d read about beforehand and I’m glad I did.

A few things I wish I’d known

Carry cash. Card machines exist but they fail often enough that you don’t want to rely on them. Dress for the sun even in the cooler months, because the middle of the day is brutal near the desert and the sites offer almost no shade. Agree on taxi fares before you get in, or use a ride app in the cities where it works, which is most of them now. And build in one genuinely lazy day. You’ll want it by the fifth morning, when the alarm goes off and the idea of another temple feels like a chore rather than a treat.

Seven days won’t show you everything. It isn’t meant to. What it can do is give you a proper feel for two very different sides of the country without leaving you wrecked. Do that once, and you’ll already be working out what to see the next time.