Three nights aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express sounds less like a holiday and more like the opening chapter of a spy novel. All aboard! Alibi: First class.
Departing Istanbul, I fully expected to find a jewel thief, a double agent or at the very least someone named Countess Something-or-Other lurking in the bar car. Instead, I found champagne, impeccable service and people who pack dinner jackets as casually as the rest of us pack socks.
The train itself is absurdly beautiful. Not “that’s nice” beautiful. More “how is this even legal?” beautiful.
The carriages are masterpieces of Art Deco design, with polished wood marquetry, gleaming brass, velvet furnishings and enough craftsmanship to make modern transport look like it was assembled during a coffee break. Every corridor feels cinematic. Every door handle deserves its own Instagram account.
You don’t walk through the train. You glide. Or at least you attempt to glide before remembering you are balancing a cocktail.
My cabin was a masterclass in elegant efficiency. By day, a sophisticated private retreat. By night, a surprisingly comfortable bedroom. By midnight, a place where I spent ten minutes trying to remember which switch controlled which light.
Dinner each evening felt like attending a moving Michelin-starred dinner party.
Somewhere between Istanbul and Paris, I lost count of the courses but not the wine. White-gloved stewards appeared with perfect timing, anticipating needs before they were expressed. At one point I became convinced they possessed either psychic abilities or a highly classified intelligence network.
The bar car, meanwhile, is where stories begin. A pianist plays. Cocktails flow. Strangers become friends. And everyone secretly believes they look like they’re in a movie. For three consecutive nights, I ordered drinks with the confidence of James Bond and stood up from my seat with the coordination of a man who had spent three consecutive nights ordering drinks.
The scenery performed its own supporting role. Bulgaria rolled past. Then Serbia. Then Hungary. Austria. Switzerland. France.
The landscape changing outside the window while life inside the train remained gloriously unchanged. Breakfast arrived. Lunch appeared. Cocktails materialised. Dinner followed.
Civilisation peaked somewhere around the invention of having someone bring coffee to your compartment while crossing Europe.
The remarkable thing about the Orient Express isn’t simply the luxury. It’s the pace. No queues.
No gate announcements. No removing laptops from bags. No being addressed as “Group 7”.
Just three days of watching Europe unfold at the perfect speed.
By the time Paris finally arrived, I’d completely forgotten what rushing felt like.
Stepping off the train was like emerging from a glamorous parallel universe where people dress for dinner, martinis come properly chilled and nobody has ever heard the phrase “not available.”
The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express doesn’t get you from Istanbul to Paris.
It convinces you that this is how travel was always supposed to be. As for the murder mystery? Disappointingly, there wasn’t one. Although the disappearance of my resolve to stop drinking champagne remains under investigation.
By: Lucas Raven
