Luxury Egypt Voyages

Alexandria wears its layers openly, the modernist Bibliotheca echoing the lost ancient library, the Qaitbay fort standing where the Pharos lighthouse once blazed. Then comes the pilgrimage inland to Giza, where the Pyramids and Sphinx rise from the sand exactly as promised and still astonish, before Tutankhamun's gold in the vast Grand Egyptian Museum. Return to a quiet berth in the evening while the giant ships anchor far offshore.

Safaga (Luxor) is your desert doorway to Luxor, the greatest open-air museum on earth. Stand small before the colossal columns of Karnak, descend into the jewel-bright painted tombs of the Valley of the Kings, and drift over the Nile's temples in a dawn hot-air balloon. Return to the ship's cool as the day's heat breaks, no sprawling resort, no scramble for the tender. Few voyages deliver ancient Thebes and a thalassotherapy soak in the same afternoon.

Sharm is where the Red Sea shows off. Snorkel the coral walls of Ras Mohammed, where the reef drops sheer into cobalt depths teeming with fusiliers and turtles, then take the afternoon at a Naama Bay beach club. Ashore, a moonlit drive into the Sinai reaches St Catherine's Monastery beneath the mountain of Moses. Bright reef by day, ancient desert silence by day, and no crowded resort in sight.

Few days at sea rival this one. Take your coffee to the rail as SeaDream III threads the Suez Canal, a ribbon of water splitting two continents, desert running to both horizons while camel trains and fishing skiffs drift past at eye level. On a small ship you feel the scale intimately, the bridge wing close enough to wave to the pilots. It is a slow, cinematic passage between two seas, one to be savoured rather than merely crossed.