Travel Review: Tour of Egypt, Cairo, Alexandria, Sharm el Sheikh, Abu Simbel, Nile Cruise, Pyramid Tours

I would either shave off a day or two or rework the schedule to include an alternative to the last few days of my itinerary. Following the cruise we returned to Cairo, two days were spent touring Old Cairo's religious sites and the Egyptology museum, and a third day we drove up to Alexandria. While we enjoyed visiting all these places, compared to the first part of the trip they were sort of unimpressive. The visits to Old Cairo and the museum could have/should have really been combined into one day. Alexandria, while a nice city, is mostly devoid of anything to see/do outside of visiting the beach. In that sense it might have been a better use of our time to skip it altogether and just chill out in Sharm El Sheik or find another location with some cool temples or monuments. 

I would also have planned a better meal experience. The food on the cruise was decent, and much better than the cuisine we had everywhere else. In Cairo and Alexandria though, the food was mostly subpar. Probably the best we had was the one lunch when our guide grabbed us some street food, falafel and bean sandwiches, which was tasty. It just seemed that every other time we were being fed some kind of grilled meat, which got old especially since none of it was ever particularly good. I would have liked the option to pick our own restaurants and to actually choose from a menu rather than be shuttled to a pre-selected place and given a choice of two things (mix grill or chicken). In theory we had such a choice a few times when meals weren't provided, but in reality all that meant was we'd order room service or risk venturing out into the chaotic streets of Cairo on our own, something we weren't about to do given the crazy traffic we observed.