I'm honing in on an Egyptian trip for later this year. Two of us traveling: one using a North America to Middle East J award and me either doing award or paid segments, depending on the value.

With the one J award, I believe we get one stopover. I've found availability and dates, but I'm wondering logistically how people would recommend arranging the trip.

I believe I should book my end destination as LXR, using the stopover in CAI. There is a fairly seamless itinerary that would lead us MCI-ORD-FRA-CAI-LXR, arriving in LXR by 5PM or so in about one day of travel. Then we'd do the stopover in CAI on the way back, then taking the 5:30AM LH flight back to FRA to catch our UA flight home.

Other than the thought of a 5:30AM flight , this seems to flow well with the other connections - nothing too long, nothing excessively tight.

Our goal in Egypt is to see the main ancient sites, but also have a couple days in modern Cairo at some point. A couple days' worth of a Nile cruise is a possibility - we honestly haven't really planned anything on the ground yet because piecing together all of these award and upgrade seats on three *A carriers has been hard enough.

So my question is: is using LXR as the end destination and CAI as the stopover an optimal approach? Or is there another internal destination besides LXR we should consider? Finally, any advantage to doing Cairo at the end vs. the beginning of our trip. (I suspect most tourists do it first.)

Our ideal trip would be small groups or private tours with the possible exception of a Nile cruise. If that matters...

Thanks!