Egypt with children: what works at which age

Egypt works with children, and it works better than the temperature and the distances suggest — provided you build the trip around what a child can actually do rather than around what you would do alone. The single most useful rule: one thing a day, in the morning, and the afternoon belongs to water.

What works at which age

• Under 4. A beach holiday with a pool, and at most one short excursion. The pyramids will not register and the drive will. Nobody should feel guilty about this.
• 4 to 7. Boats, glass-bottom boats, the aquarium, camels, one museum, one temple. Attention lasts about ninety minutes, and heat shortens it further.
• 8 to 12. The best age for Egypt, genuinely. Old enough for the story, young enough to find a mummy thrilling rather than macabre. Most of a full day works if it is broken by lunch and water.
• Teenagers. Diving courses, quad bikes, the wreck story, and the parts of Cairo that are not on the tourist route. Give them one thing that is theirs and the rest goes easily.

A glass-bottom boat over the reef off Hurghada

The Red Sea, which is the easy half

The coast is where a family holiday in Egypt actually lives. Warm shallow water, no tide to speak of, and boats that leave in the morning and are back for the afternoon.

The glass-bottom boat is the right first trip for a child who cannot yet swim well. They see the reef, the fish and often a turtle, without going in the water at all, and it is short enough that nobody gets bored.

Tanks at the Hurghada Grand Aquarium

The aquarium is indoors and air-conditioned, which is the point on a day when the sun has won. It is an hour and a half, and it turns the fish they saw from the boat into fish they can name.

A submarine trip descends properly below the surface with the children sitting at portholes. It is the one that gets described at school afterwards.

The beach and shallows at Giftun Island

Island days — Giftun, Orange Bay, Hula Hula — are a beach with a boat ride attached. Choose a private boat if the group timetable worries you; being able to come back early because someone has had enough is worth the difference.

Snorkelling: the one safety line that is not negotiable

A child must be able to swim before they snorkel from a boat. Not "is confident in the pool" — actually able to swim, in water they cannot stand up in, wearing a mask that changes how breathing feels.

A life jacket keeps a child floating. It does not stop them panicking, it does not stop water going into a snorkel, and it does not make an adult's supervision unnecessary. Every operator will lend one and every operator will tell you it is fine. One adult per child in the water is the rule that actually works.

If your child cannot swim yet, the glass-bottom boat and the submarine give them the reef without the risk, and they will not feel they missed anything.