Somewhere in the Swiss Alps, in the late afternoon, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express curves around a long bend and the train’s full length becomes visible through the window: a procession of cream and navy carriages against mountains and an improbably blue sky. At that point it stops feeling like transport. This is travel as an act in itself, not a means to an end, but the destination.
The carriages that Belmond has preserved and restored for the VSOE are the originals: wagon-lits sleeping cars built in the 1920s and early 1930s for the original Orient Express service that connected Paris with Istanbul, and Pullman day cars constructed in the same period for the aristocratic leisure travel that was the golden age of European rail. The interiors, marquetry panels depicting the landscapes and flowers of the countries the train was designed to pass through, inlaid veneer in geometric Art Deco patterns, brass fittings polished by decades of careful attention, are authentic. This is not reproduction or pastiche but the real thing, maintained with extraordinary care and attention to historical accuracy.
The cabins are small by the standards of contemporary hotel rooms, and this is part of the education the train provides. They are intimate, beautifully finished spaces designed for the rhythm of travel rather than extended residence: a bed that folds down as if by magic, a window that frames the European landscape at whatever hour you choose to watch it, and the particular reassurance of a world made small and manageable by the movement of the train. The cabin steward, whose name you will know by the first morning, attends to every comfort with a discretion and warmth that belongs to the same period as the carriages.
The restaurant car is the social centre of the train and the location of some of its finest pleasures. Three-course dinners are served at white-clothed tables with crystal glassware and silver service while the landscape passes outside the window: the Italian lakes at dusk, the French countryside in the golden afternoon light. The food is genuinely good, drawing on regional traditions along the route and presented with the theatre appropriate to the setting. The bar car, with its Lalique glass panels and resident pianist, becomes the place where conversations with strangers acquire the candour that only movement and distance can produce.
The London to Venice route, departing London Victoria in the morning, crossing the Channel by ferry or tunnel, joining the train at Calais or Paris, crossing the Alps through the Brenner Pass, and arriving in Venice the following afternoon, covers some of the most beautiful landscapes in Europe in a single continuous journey. The Istanbul itinerary, operated seasonally, follows the original route through the Balkans and across the Bosphorus to the Asian shore.
Book far in advance. The VSOE is one of the world’s most sought after travel experiences, and the most popular routes and dates sell out many months ahead.
