The Isimbi Family surrounded us, tumbling down vines playfully in the trees above, swatting their siblings like my own children do on a regular basis, chewing on stalks of bamboo noisily.

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Travel Dispatch is a publication for paid subscribers. It features deep dives into the itineraries I build for myself and clients. This one features the full report of our Euro Summer with our 5 and 7 year old children, Malia and Jack.

Our Euro Summer did not start out as a nearly month-long trip. It began as trip to celebrate my friend Laura’s 40^th birthday in her favorite place, the French Riviera. Our favorite direct flight to Europe is the United Denver-London flight, so then we decided to tack on a few days in England. Once I looked at a map, I realized that Nice was driving distance from the Dolomites, so we added Sonnwies because I’ve been dying to check it out. Then, we had to add in Paris.

This is how many of my personal travel plans develop. Luckily, I have a supportive spouse who says “yes” to my insane ideas, such as dragging our 5- and 7-year-old children to 6 hotels between three countries and six cities.

I affectionately call our children the Bougie Bunnies, which you will see on my Substack. They are incredibly spoiled when it comes to travel, and they love five-star hotels as much as I do. I love traveling with them. Our 5 year old is still a challenge, but he’s getting there. Our daughter is a blast to travel with at this point. I grew up in a family that took us everywhere, and want to instill that same sense of curiosity in our children.

Was this trip insane? Overly ambitious? Did I overpack? Yes, yes, and yes. We also timed it with the heatwave, got nine million mosquito bites, were yelled at by an angry French dude in a museum, and drove 7 hours instead of flying from the Dolomites to Nice, losing our entire plane ticket fare in the process. However, it was also absolutely worth it.

Our itinerary was:

• England: Estelle Manor 4 nights, Covent Garden Hotel 3 nights

• Dolomites: Sonnwies 5 nights

• Nice: Maison Albar Le Victoria 2 nights, a villa for 6 nights

• Paris: Hotel Regina Louvre 3 nights

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My Ireland packing list was popular, so here’s what’s going in my bag for my French Riviera trip with my Bougie Bunnies later this month:

French Riviera Packing List

French Riviera Packing List

Kayl…

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A brief note on this publication. Travel Dispatch will be a new series you can opt into. The Upgrade includes three publications:

1) The Upgrade | Weekly. Everybody gets this. It’s free and arrives on Tuesdays in your inbox. Hospitality hot takes, industry deep dives, the Room Report of hotels worth a stay, and the Lobby Bar with hospitality industry tea and news.

2) Travel Dispatch. You’ll receive your first post for free this weekend. Going forward, they will be available for a paid subscription. These are personal travel essays, destination guides, and real itineraries I’ve built for myself and clients over 18 years in the luxury travel industry. This weekend - you’ll receive my mother-daughter trip to Paris with my bougie bunny. These are not weekly - they will come out once or twice per month.

3) Hotel History. My father, Richard Kelley, wrote a weekly newsletter about the history of our family company, Outrigger Hotels, for 40 years. Paid subscribers will receive occasional editions of my father’s archived Saturday Briefing articles. I want him to live on through his work now that he’s gone.

To customize what lands in your inbox, go to substack.com/settings, click on The Upgrade under Subscriptions, and toggle each section on or off.

Happy travels,

Anne Marie

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A Mother-Daughter Trip to Paris

My daughter is, undoubtedly, the luckiest kid I know. Last fall, she turned 7, and I let her choose a trip with me as her birthday present.

My Bougie Bunny chose Paris, (because of course she did).

Insane 7th birthday present? Absolutely. Do I regret it? Not for a second. I’m decently certain that my 7th birthday involved a Lisa Frank theme and Chuck-E-Cheese. But, my daughter went to Paris.

I’m a luxury travel planner, and honestly, if I can flex my planning skills anywhere, it should be on designing the quintessential Princess Paris trip for my offspring.

Malia loves the “Claris Goes to Paris” books, which feature a little mouse with expensive taste who wants to be a fashion designer, and proceeds to adventure around France name dropping Pucci, Chanel, and Dior. Malia also loves princesses, sweet things, and being the center of attention. She also complimented a woman in an elevator on her bag, saying “I just love your Chanel!” Yes, I know I’m in trouble.

I knew I needed to anchor the trip around fashion, food, and Marie Antoinette.

Where we stayed:

I chose Relais Christine both for its location near the Luxembourg Gardens (and their epic playground), and for its ornate decor.

Our room was fit for a princess, and the staff made sure to sing Malia happy birthday the first morning of the trip over a breakfast filled with hot chocolate and croissants.

What we did:

• A mother-daughter massage at the Cheval Blanc Dior spa

• A boat ride down the Seine blasting music so we could have a dance party

• A tour of the Dior museum to brush up on her fashion history

• A chocolate and macarons tasting tour

• A guided tour of Versailles after watching the Marie Antoinette movie

• A photoshoot in front of the Eiffel Tower

• A private shopping experience at https://www.lileauxfees.com/

Where we ate:

• Vagenende - art deco style French restaurant where Malia devoured escargot

• Huguette - sweet little restaurant with piano music and amazing clam dish

• Giraffe - fancy brunch with views of the Eiffel Tower

• The Ritz - afternoon tea

I am lucky enough that I’ve been to Paris several times in my life, but I’d never seen the city like this - at a slower pace, through her eyes. Everything felt magical, from watching the Eiffel Tower light up to riding the carousel at the Luxembourg Gardens together.

7 is special. She’s still such a little girl who loves dolls and Disney movies, who believes in fairies, twirls in dresses, and doesn’t quite understand what happened at the end of the Marie Antoinette movie. My daughter is also now able to travel as an excellent companion. She never complained about the long flight or distances we walked on winding streets. When it rained, she was thrilled to have a chance to carry an umbrella and sing in the rain. She charmed the pants off of just about every server and front desk person we encountered. I quite honestly had one of the best trips of my life with her.

Celebrating my daughter’s birthday was as much a celebration of my day of giving birth, and our bond together, as it was her moment. Let’s face it, motherhood is hard, and after seven years of it, I deserved to reap a bit of what I’d sowed.

Traveling with our kids gives us the brief gift of concentrated time together, focused on memory making and story sharing. There are no “just a second while I respond to this emails” while you’re walking through the Versailles gardens. There is a brief respite from endless navigation of soccer games, ballet recitals, birthday parties, and theater performances. Routine gives way to “yes” moments where you eat gelato at 10am because you are in Paris.

I am so excited to raise a traveler, and can’t wait for the adventures ahead with my wonderfully spoiled Bougie Bunny.

-Anne Marie, The Upgrade Weekly

The pyramids, a Dahabiya cruise down the Nile, Abu Simbel, and why this is the moment to go

🗝️ This post marks the first of the Master Key series - comprised of actual itineraries I’ve built for luxury clients, my own travel guides, and in-depth brand history lessons from the hospitality industry. These posts are for paid subscribers.

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Egypt can feel intimating for travelers, yet is on most people’s bucket list. It was certainly on mine. Prior to my own trip three years ago, I didn’t feel comfortable building trips for clients in Egypt.

As a luxury travel advisor, I pride myself on my network of providers that I’ve built around the world, as well as bringing personal travel experience to my itineraries. In some areas, those connections have to be made in person. I wanted to make sure that I had traveled to Egypt in person - and this is the trip that I’ve now built for several clients with the connections I made there.

This is the right time to travel to Egypt. The Middle Eastern war has made many travelers wary of visiting the region, but Egypt remains a safe place to travel with the same travel advisories it had prior to the conflict. What the slowdown in arrivals has meant is smaller crowds, lower rates, and probably the best time to go to the country I’ve seen in years.

Additionally, The Grand Egyptian Museum finished opening its full collection in 2024. The small luxury dahabiya category on the Nile has matured into an incredible collection of ships. And for the first time in a long time, the crowds are manageable. Europeans who might otherwise go are choosing elsewhere right now, and that’s your opening.

I’ve built out a full sample itinerary, and I want to walk you through how I think about Egypt as a destination, what makes this trip work, and the specific places that make for an amazing first-time visit.

Yours truly in the Hathor Temple

Structural Overview

This is a 10-night trip - Cairo, Luxor, cruise the Nile, Aswan and Abu Simbel, then back to Cairo.

You need 3 nights in Cairo on the front end to see Giza, Saqqara, and the museums without rushing.

• Then, you lay to Luxor and spend 5 nights on a private dahabiya sailing from Luxor south to Aswan.

• On checkout day from the boat, you fly to Abu Simbel for a few hours, then connect back to Cairo.

• Two nights at the Four Seasons Nile Plaza to decompress, visit the Grand Egyptian Museum, and shop the bazaar.

Cairo: The Mena House

Sheerly for the sake of logistics, my choice for the first Cairo portion of this trip is the Marriott Mena House.

Traffic in Cairo is insane, and it’s a good idea to stay near the sights you will see.

The Mena House is a 19th-century palace sitting in 40 acres of gardens at the foot of the Giza Pyramids. You can see the pyramids from certain rooms and from the garden, and most importantly, it’s near the GEM, Saqqara, and the pyramids. You wake up on your first morning in Egypt and the thing you came to see is right there - check.

While it’s not the most luxurious five star hotel experience, it gets the job done with multiple restaurants, the Saray Spa, a pool, 331 rooms. The M Club lounge provides extra perks for guests who book at that tier. But, the reason you stay here is to stand in the garden with a coffee at 6am and have a pyramid tell you good morning.

Days 2 and 3 in Cairo:

Day 2 starts at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NEMC), which is the newer museum that opened in 2021. This is where the royal mummies are now, moved in a ceremony that the Egyptian government did not understate. 22 pharaohs, 18 royal consorts, including Ramesses II. From there, your private guide takes you to Old Coptic Cairo, the car-free section built inside the 6th-century BC Babylon Fortress. The Hanging Church, the Coptic Museum, the Church of St. Sergius where the Holy Family is believed to have sheltered. It’s one of the most peaceful spots in the city.

Day 3 is the Giza Plateau in the morning: you enter the Great Pyramid, you do the camel ride (yes, do it for the photo), you see the Sphinx. Then the afternoon goes to Saqqara, 40km southwest of Cairo. Saqqara is the older, less-visited complex and most tourists skip it, which is a mistake. The Step Pyramid of Djoser, the Serapeum underground galleries, the Imhotep Museum. Your guide earns their fee here. The history spans 3,000 years of burial culture and without context it’s a pile of old bricks. With context, it’s the whole story of how a civilization thought about death and eternity.

The Nile: A Dahabiya, Not a Cruise Ship

Day 4 you fly to Luxor (7:15am, about an hour).

On arrival, you head straight to Karnak Temple. The ancient Egyptians called it Ipet-Sut, which translates roughly as “The Most Select of Places.” It’s a complex of temples, chapels, and sanctuaries built and added to over 2,000 years. Nearly every pharaoh of the New Kingdom left something here.

Then you board your dahabiya.

A dahabiya is a private traditional Nile sailing boat. The ones I work with carry 9-18 guests maximum and they are nothing like a cruise ship. You’re moored at temples. You eat on deck. You sail at your own pace. The cabins have proper bedding made from Egyptian cotton and real Nile views. It’s the way wealthy Egyptians traveled for centuries and the format has been brought back at the luxury end of the market with genuinely excellent results.

I recommend two options depending on your group size and preference:

Dahabiya Nayera is a 9-suite boat with a strong culinary program, a sun pool deck, and indoor/outdoor dining. Intimate, elegant, well-run.

Nour El Nil operates a fleet of dahabiyas with a strong reputation for service and food quality, and more flexibility on vessel size. If you’re traveling solo, as a couple, or with a larger group, there’s usually a configuration that works.

Both are excellent. The choice usually comes down to availability and how many people you’re traveling with.

What you see on the Nile:

Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut Temple (Day 5). You enter Tutankhamun’s tomb. Still painted, still extraordinary even though it’s one of the smaller royal tombs. Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple sits across the Nile from Karnak: three terraced levels, painted reliefs, and the story of a queen who declared herself pharaoh and pulled it off for two decades.

Edfu Temple (Day 6). The best-preserved temple in Egypt. Dedicated to Horus, buried under centuries of sand until the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette dug it out in 1860. The paint is still there. Two enormous granite falcon statues flank the entrance. It’s extraordinary.

Kom Ombo (Day 7). The only temple in Egypt dedicated to two gods simultaneously. The wall carvings include what appear to be surgical instruments, which tells you something about the sophistication of ancient Egyptian medicine. The mummified crocodiles in the adjacent museum are a bonus my kids would have absolutely lost their minds over.

Aswan and a felucca ride (Day 8). Aswan is where the granite quarries were. The unfinished obelisk is still lying in the quarry, cracked before completion. The afternoon felucca sail around Elephantine Island is an hour of just being on the Nile, watching the desert light change on the cliffs.

Abu Simbel: Worth Every Bit of the Logistics

Day 9 is the logistically complicated day. Some people may choose to spend the night in Aswan and stay at the Old Cataract Hotel, where Agatha Christie wrote “Death on the Nile.”

You check out of the boat at 7:30am, transfer to Aswan airport, fly 45 minutes to Abu Simbel, have about two hours at the temples, then fly back to Cairo via Aswan and arrive around 5pm.

Abu Simbel is Ramesses II’s masterpiece: two temples carved directly into a sandstone cliff in Nubia around 1264 BC. The four 65-foot seated colossi of Ramesses on the main facade are among the most recognizable images in the ancient world. The interior sanctuary was built with such precision that the sun illuminates the innermost statues on exactly two days a year: February 22nd and October 22nd. The smaller temple next door, dedicated to his wife Nefertari, has her statues the same size as his, which was essentially unheard of.

The other thing worth knowing about Abu Simbel: both temples were moved in 1968, cut into 20-ton blocks and reassembled 65 meters higher and 200 meters back from the original site, to save them from the rising waters of Lake Nasser after the Aswan High Dam was built. UNESCO coordinated a four-year international effort to do it. They’re a World Heritage Site.

The fact that humans moved entire ancient temples up a cliff and then put them back together so that the sun still hits the statues on the right two days a year is, to me, almost as impressive as building them in the first place.

Cairo, Part Two: The Four Seasons Nile Plaza

The Four Seasons Nile Plaza is in the Garden City neighborhood on the east bank of the Nile. Different feel from the Mena House: urban, contemporary, Nile views, multiple restaurants, excellent spa and pool. After eight days of 5am wake-ups and desert heat, this is where you recover.

Day 10 is the Grand Egyptian Museum. The GEM opened its full collection in 2024 and is the largest archaeological museum in the world by exhibition space. The complete Tutankhamun collection alone covers 5,000 objects across multiple galleries. The gold mask is here. Plan the full morning and pace yourself.

The afternoon goes to Khan el-Khalili, the historic bazaar in Islamic Cairo. Narrow lanes, spice vendors, textile sellers, goldsmiths, coffee houses. This is where you buy things. Budget time and some flexibility.

One More Option I Want to Mention: Al Moudira

If you want a land-based alternative in Luxor, or want to extend your time on the west bank, Al Moudira is the property I’d put you in.

It’s a boutique hotel, 25 rooms, owner-designed over several years using traditional Nubian and Syrian craftsmen. There are hand-painted ceilings, mosaic fountains, arched courtyards, bougainvillea everywhere. It sits on the west bank close to the Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut Temple.

Al Moudira is great for a honeymoon, an anniversary, or anyone who prioritizes atmosphere over scale.

The Practical Stuff

Heat: Travel in January and February can be chilly, but still sunny. By July, Luxor and Aswan regularly hit 105-110F. No matter when you go, each day should follow the pattern of an early start - hit the temples before 10am, back on the air-conditioned boat by midday, afternoon nap, temples again in late afternoon.

Private guide: I always book a private guide to escort each of my client groups for the entire duration of their trip, and the guides I work with are Egyptologists. Navigating Egypt on your own can be stressful, and having a guide can make a huge difference.

Visas: US citizens can get a single-entry tourist visa on arrival ($25 USD cash) or in advance via the Egyptian e-visa portal. Get it in advance. It removes a line.

Pricing: The dahabiya, private guide, transfers, and tours start from $5,000 per person in low season. Cairo hotels are dynamic and priced per room category. Everything is quoted per party once I know your dates, group size, and preferences.

Gratuities:

Egypt is a tipping culture and your guides, drivers, and boat crew depend on it as a significant part of their income. Budget accordingly so you’re not doing math at every stop and pull out money before you go. USD small bills are fine. Bring some envelopes to make it easier.

Private Egyptologist guide: $20-25 USD per day, per travel party. This person is with you 10+ hours a day and is the reason the trip makes sense. Don’t be stingy here.

Driver/transfer vehicle: $5-10 USD per transfer.

Boat crew (dahabiya): $10-15 USD per person per day, distributed at the end of the cruise. For a 5-night cruise with 2 people, budget $100-150 total to split among the crew. The captain and head steward typically receive a slightly larger share.

Hotel housekeeping: 20-30 Egyptian pounds (roughly $1 USD) per day, left on the pillow. Both Cairo hotels will have staff expecting this.

Site attendants: You will be approached by site attendants who open gates, turn on lights in tombs, and offer to take photos. 10-20 Egyptian pounds ($0.50-1 USD) per interaction is standard. Bring a stash of small Egyptian pound notes for this. Your guide will help you know when tipping is expected versus when you can politely decline.

Felucca captain: 50-100 Egyptian pounds for the ride.

Restaurants: 10-15% if service isn’t included. Check the bill first.

One practical note: Get Egyptian pounds at the airport on arrival and keep a pocket of small bills specifically for tipping throughout the day. Attempting to tip in USD works in a pinch but pounds are always preferred and more useful to the recipient.

This trip was one of my all-time favorite bucket list experiences, and each group that I’ve sent to Egypt since has had an incredible time. The sheer scale of the history is staggering. The Nile is as beautiful as you imagine. And right now, the timing is good.

If you want to talk through what this would look like for your specific travel party, reach out: AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com