Bringing your children to Egypt or Jordan can be an adventure for all the family. There is so much to see, and most of the sites are so big, famous and impressive, that most children get a lot out of a holiday here, and are not quickly bored.
Many schools also feature Egypt in their history syllabus, and a visit here can complement these courses to really help their learning come alive.
There are obviously some considerations to make if you are travelling with children, and we have made some notes below to cover some of these. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about travelling to the region with your own family.
Children aged 12 and over are welcome to join any of our small-group tours.
For families with children under 12 we can recommend our specialist family tours, (detailed below), or a private departure on any of our other tours.
We are happy to arrange private tours for families, or groups of families travelling together. Running your tour privately allows your guide to be more flexible with your itinerary during the day, and to spend more/less time at certain sites according to your children’s interests and their ages. You can stick to exactly the same itinerary as our normal tours, or we can tailor-make an itinerary to fit your personal requirements, the age of your children, and your flights. If your children have some school coursework, or other excercises to do while in Egypt, we’ll be happy to set some time and a suitable location aside during the day for them to work on these. We will also choose a guide that we know works well with the age of the children in your family.
We offer a range of specific group departures which are only open to families with children. We have designed the itineraries for these tours to work better for children, taking out some of the temple visits, and adding in some activities that have found children enjoy. These include camel rides at the pyramids, seeing the chariot races at Jerash, a fun English/Arabic language lesson with some Egyptian students at a school in Aswan (term time only), and a shortened felucca trip (one night instead of our normal two). All children doing one of our Egyptian family tours will also be able to design and take home a complimentary papyrus with a hieroglyph of their name or other message.
These tours are designed to be most suitable for children aged 6 to 12, and you should expect most children on our group departures to be between these ages. The guides will pitch their explanations at this level. Younger and older children are also very welcome.
During busy periods (Christmas & Easter, February and October half term holidays), we normally run several groups on each tour on the same date. On these dates we split all our customers up so that children of similar ages travel together, and the guides will adjust the way they run the tour based on the age of the children in their group. The maximum group size of 16 remains, but you can mix with other groups in the hotels if you wish.
Feluccas are basic sailing boats, and have low sides. Life-jackets in various different sizes are available on board – please ask for these for your children if they are not strong swimmers. Mosquito nets are also provided, but you should bring insect repellent and long sleeved clothes with you for the evenings and early mornings. Sun screen and sun hats are also essential. In the evenings we often have a campfire where you can sing songs and have fun with the guide and Nubian boat crew. Travelling on board feluccas is not suitable for very young children.
Some Nile cruise boats will not accept children under 12 years of age on board. However, we use a large enough range of boats, that we will always be able to find a good boat that will take our booking if you do have younger children. There are plunge pools and sun-decks on all the cruise boats, but we do recommend that you ensure your children have some games or reading material with them. The boats do not normally sail for more than around 5 hours at a time without stopping to give you a chance to go on-shore and have a change of scene.
As a general rule, hotels in the Nile Valley (Cairo, Aswan, Luxor) have limited facilities specially designed for children (eg. play areas & games). Most of the 5-star hotels do have baby-sitting services, but this will not extend to nursery or day-care arrangements for older children. Some hotels are better than others in their suitability, and we will choose appropriate hotels for your family accordingly, particularly if you are doing one of our family tours or a private or tailor-made trip. Some simple considerations we make include that fact that some hotel pools do not have shallow-ends while others are more sculptured and fun, some hotels are located right on busy roads, while others have their own secure compounds and gardens, and some hotels just have classical elegant restaurants, while others are more relaxed.
Hotels and beach resorts by the Red Sea (in Hurghada and Sharm-el-Sheikh for example) have many more facilities and available activities, and more to keep children occupied during the day. If you have any special requests for particular hotels, please do not hesitate to ask, and we’ll be happy to quote for them.
Please check the accommodation pages on our website for details of the hotels that we normally use on our group and private tours. These pages includes links to detailed features on many of the hotels we use with more information and photos.
Further details can be found on the travel insurance page on our website.
If you have any questions about travelling in Egypt and Jordan with your family regarding the suitability of any of our group tours, arranging a private or tailor-made tour, or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us. Please find our special family tours for Egypt and Jordan listed below.
If you are looking for a tour and not finding what you are looking for, have a look at our best other related tours to check out for your travel plans. At Encounters Travel, we offer a variety of tours to suit your needs. So sit back, relax, and let us help you plan the perfect getaway.
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