Venice Simplon Orient Express: one night aboard the world’s most famous train
The Orient Express has always carried its passengers - royalty and writers alike - in opulence. As we embark from Paris en route to the foot of the Alps I think, could anybody not enjoy this?
There are few travel experiences steeped in as much legend as the Orient Express. The transcontinental rail journey that once spirited the great and the good from Paris to Constantinople is arguably the most famous train trip in the world, immortalised on the page and the silver screen.
And so, as the limousine that’s been despatched to collect us from our Paris hotel pulls up at the Gare de l’Est, we can barely contain our excitement.
There she sits on platform four – the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express: her royal blue carriages gleaming in the faint light of a midwinter’s afternoon. Only a red carpet, a welcome party of immaculately dressed staff and a brass duet lie between us and the most indulgent 24 hours we’re ever likely to experience.
We’re taking an overnight trip from the City of Light to the base of the Alps. It’s something of a new, novelty route for the grande dame of rail travel, designed to capture the seriously cashed-up portion of the luxury travel set who want to precede their schussing and schnapps in Megeve with an overnight bout of pure hedonism.
A white-gloved steward, resplendent in a powder blue overcoat and matching kepi leads us to our digs for the night, a suite called Le Lac. Think polished mahogany walls with delicate mother-of-pearl inlay, Lalique crystal light fittings, a marble ensuite and a jacquard upholstered banquette that transforms at night into an eminently comfortable double bed. Caviar-topped canapes and a chilled bottle of Veuve greet us on arrival.
The suite is one of six that have been added to the train in recent years as a concession to the modern luxury traveller’s penchant for a bed you can actually stretch out in and a bathroom you don’t have to share with strangers.
If, however, the authentic experience is more your speed you can fill your boots in one of the train’s Historic Cabins, a snug arrangement made from original Orient Express train carriages, complete with a bench seat that transforms at night into bunks, a wash basin for your ablutions and a shared toilet at the end of the carriage.
Wherever you find yourself, each car is steeped in history. Ours was once the preferred carriage of Romanian King Carol II, who commandeered it regularly for on-board trysts with his mistress. Car 3309 houses the cabin that Agatha Christie preferred and from which was hatched the idea for Murder On The Orient Express, the book that spawned the multiple movies that now burnish the ongoing legend.
With a blast of its horn, and as commuters stop, point and stare, the train leaves the station, rumbling gently through the outskirts of Paris towards the historic town of Reims and on into the rolling hills of Champagne.
We watch smugly, Veuve in hand, as high-speed trains hurtle past our window, spiriting their harried cargo at breakneck speed to very important business meetings or the fulfilment of family commitments.
When you live in a world in which a premium is put on things moving quickly and efficiently, is it not the ultimate luxury to go slow? To embrace languor and drink in the passing scenery?
As night falls, barenaked trees flit past outside our window silhouetted against the heavy sky, balls of mistletoe growing in their forks. Occasionally we pass a quaint French village where houses seem to huddle in against the encroaching darkness, clustering around the steeple of an old stone church.
Not that the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is really about the scenery that skids by outside. Honestly, if you’re not perma-dazzled by the spectacle inside, you might want to check for a pulse.
Every detail is considered, every design flourish deliberate: from the gold brocade curtains of the Oriental carriage to the elaborate Chinese lacquer frescoes in the bar car. At night, while you sleep, there’s a man whose job it is to walk the length of the train buffing to perfection every brass fitting and every inch of polished timber.
For the pre-dinner cocktail hour all passengers don black tie. The bellinis, martinis and negronis flow as a charismatic pianist tinkles on a baby grand. There’s something of a Gatsby vibe to the whole affair – a hint that with the right ingredients the evening could easily descend into a bacchanalia.
“If you strike the right combination of guests, the parties in here can go well into the morning,” confides Massimo Paganello, our affable Italian train manager, the glint in whose eye suggests he’s attended a wild party in his time.
Dinner is served in the adjacent Cote d’Azur car – all plush navy velvet with brass accents, gold-embossed Limoges crockery, cut crystal glassware and the sort of hefty silverware that signals a serious meal is in the offing.
From a kitchen the size of your average broom closet emerges a delicious starter of leeks with black truffle, egg yolk and parmesan shortbread, followed soon after by a vertiginous lobster vol au vent. The excellent wines flow freely.
By now we’ve made firm friends with our fellow passengers and conversation bubbles between tables, buoyed by the sense we’ve all become members of the same improbable, exclusive club.
As small French towns slip by outside, we return to the bar car, where a trombone-playing crooner sets the tone with an upbeat medley of Sinatra tunes and fellow guests shed their inhibitions and dance with abandon, champagne coupes aloft.
“Kings and crooks, millionaires and refugees, big-game hunters and smugglers, prima donnas and courtesans travelled on it,” wrote author and occasional Cold War spy EH Cookridge of the Orient Express.“Tycoons and financiers clinched their deals across its sumptuous dining tables; diplomats, spies, and revolutionaries on board the train moved secretively to their moments of history.” There are no kings or queens aboard our journey, but we learn that only weeks before Jay-Z and Beyonce commandeered the entire train for a four-day knees-up in Bordeaux for the big fella’s 50th – at a reputed cost of half-a-million euros. So that counts as royalty.
And unless they’re especially good at their job, there don’t appear to be any spies. There’s probably a tycoon (because the prices are frankly eye-watering) and maybe a prima donna or two, even if celebrated French chef, Jean Imbert, who’s aboard quality-testing the menu he’s created for the world’s most famous train is disappointingly charming company. When we retire to our cabin, we sleep like the dead. The next morning we lift our window blind to find the first snow of the season has dusted the jagged tops of nearby peaks. and gingerbread houses dot the valleys below.
Not for the first time, it occurs to us that while it might be an old fashioned concept, there’s a lot to be said for a travel experience where it’s decidedly more about the journey than the destination.
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