Sometime between the exquisite herb-stuffed guinea fowl and the pear compote lathered in whipped zabaglione, the carefully attuned ears of the servers in the sumptuous emerald L’Etoile du Nord dining car pricked up.
Whatever they were doing — refilling flutes of Champagne, crumbing tablecloths with silver spoons — they froze, as one extravagantly mustachioed member of the impeccably tailored waitstaff came marching down the narrow aisle. “Hold the glasses!” he called out. “Hold the glasses!”
The rest of the servers echoed Italian Hodor, and my fellow passengers and I gripped our drinks, not knowing why. The brakes squeaked, and the train jerked, making any untethered china and crystal chatter like winter teeth. It wasn’t murder on the Orient Express, but maybe a minor heart attack.
Here’s what it’s like onboard the Venice Simplon Orient Express
This literal bump in the road on my overnight October journey from Venice to Brussels on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, A Belmond Train was jarring not because there was any danger involved — except maybe a chipped glass or two — but because the onboard experience otherwise unfurls so seamlessly, with such cinematic choreography and élan, you forget you’re in the real world and not a period picture. As VSEO manager Pascal Deyrolle tells his team at the beginning of the season, “We are not in the railway business, we are not in hospitality. We are in show business.”
And I am in the literary business, a postwar novelist riding out Prohibition in Paris. Marco, s’il vous plaît, un autre Champagne. I returned to the lovely lunch (Michelin star collector Jean Imbert designs the onboard menus) as the waitstaff returned to pouring and crumbing and being extravagantly mustachioed, and Lake Garda filled the windows with big pools of blue.
The Orient Express history is storied and about as complicated as Agatha Christie’s titular whodunit. Save for some wartime interruptions, the OG OE’s iconic Paris-to-Istanbul journey ran from 1883 to 1977. In 1982, The New York Times wrote of the line’s resurrection under hotelier James Sherwood, “with service three times a week between London, Paris and Venice […] and for part of the trip the cars will use Orient Express rolling stock from the 1920s, all meticulously restored to Art Deco splendour.”
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The train became the launching pad for Sherwood’s Orient-Express Hotels, Ltd., which changed names to Belmond in 2014 (the train was allowed to keep the OE surname), which was then purchased by LVMH in 2018. Meanwhile, Accor purchased the Orient Express name in 2022 and will debut Rome-to-Palermo trips on Orient Express La Dolce Vita next year, as well as a transcontinental service on the future Orient Express in 2025.
Deyrolle, who started on the VSOE in 1992 as a cabin steward, has seen the recent ascendance of train travel from inside the industry: “COVID-19 accelerated the need and want for a more sustainable way of travelling, and you’re getting a lot more players coming into the market.” Next year, Belmond brings back its Singapore roundtrip on the Eastern & Oriental Express, and Dreamstar Lines plans to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles with the first overnight service between the cities since 1968. In 2025, a team that includes veterans of Eurorail and Mama Shelter will debut Midnight Trains, billed as a “hotel on rails” running from Paris to 10 European cities.
On the VSOE, the low-stress logistics of getting from A to B are great, but I came for the in-between. It’s 24 to 36 hours of immersive theatre whose curtain goes up as soon as you see the staff gathered alongside the gleaming, brass-trimmed navy train. Parked there in Venice’s Santa Lucia Station (and later, each time the train paused during the journey), folks on the platform going about the daily doldrums of life lit up.
Eyes wide, phones raised to get a shot of the myth on wheels. My fellow passengers, too. They lined up to have their photos taken with the staff outside the train in Venice, like Disney tots waiting to meet Princess Elsa. “The guests, no matter how big they’ve made it in the world, how famous they are, how important they are, when they see the train standing at the platform, they are kids,” Deyrolle said. How many brands rent that kind of space in the Western subconscious?
My Swiss steward, Melissa, a Belmond veteran, met me at the door to my carriage and whisked me on board and into my suite, one of eight that was fully renovated in June 2023 by in-house designer Marianne Khan. The landscapes the VSOE traverses inspire four different designs: the forest, the countryside, the mountains, and (my cabin) the lakes, expressed in saturated blue fabric trimmed with white and gold. A silver bucket of Veuve Clicquot, caviar-beaded canapés, and an overflowing bowl of plums, rambutans, grapes, and other fruits awaited on the white-clothed table, and the mirrored built-in bar came stocked with still and sparkling water, Mariage Frères teas, and branded Orient Express stationery and postcards.
Melissa poured Champagne and introduced my second steward, Thibault, who talked about the suite’s woodwork and marquetry the way people talk about their children, tracing the swooping lanes of rosewood and mother-of-pearl across the interior shutters, which fold open to reveal a window into the hall. A grander version of the same art deco pattern curls up the wall behind the royal blue sofa, giving the effect of a headboard once the stewards convert the couch into a double bed while you’re at dinner. “See the blue here?” Thibault pointed to the swooping arcs of periwinkle wood, then detailed the specific dying process used so the oak absorbs the colour while its whorls of grain remain intact.
After lunch in L’Etoile du Nord (one of three dining cars on board) and late afternoon coffee served by Melissa and Thibault in the suite, it was time to dress for dinner. The preposterousness of putting on a gown or tux — the VSOE has a strict dress code — to eat in a vehicle careening across the countryside at 100 miles per hour (160.93 kilometres per hour) is precisely why it’s so romantic. “We are all on stage, we all wear a costume,” Deyrolle said. “Our guests wear a costume, and they play a part in the play.”
After drinks set to live piano in the swanky Bar Car 3674, dinner unfolded in the ivory-and-gold L’Oriental dining car among painted cranes and macaws perching on black-lacquer wall panels. Like the waiters, we felt the brakes before we heard them and held our cups and bottles close. “Hold the glasses,” we called to one another casually, across our cocktails and the tableside cheese tray. Talented actors, we’d learned our lines in record time.
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(Hero and feature image credit: Belmond)
This story first appeared on travelandleisure.com
Related: This Overnight Train From Vienna To Venice Is Affordable And Charming
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