Tag Archives: travel & leisure

Much of European train travel is about efficiency and comfort—punctually leaving and arriving and having a cozy seat or sleeper compartment in which to devour the latest issue of the Economist. But rail travel in the United Kingdom and on the Continent is also about experience: gaping out the window at Alpine glaciers, savoring gourmet cuisine in a restored last-century dining car. Accordingly, our ten favorite European trains don’t necessarily offer the fastest journeys—just the most memorable. All aboard!

Sweet Switzerland: The Chocolate Train

Route: Montreux to Broc, Switzerland
Duration: 9 hours, 45 minutes, roundtrip
www.raileurope.com

This charming train running in summer and fall climbs from Montreux overlooking Lake Geneva to the medieval town of Gruyères, population 1,600, home to the cheese of the same name. Tour the cheese factory and the local castle, have lunch, then reboard the train and continue on to Broc. There you’ll bus to the Cailler-Nestlé chocolate factory, tucked between Lake Gruyères and mountain peaks, for free samples, before making the return trip.

Tunnels Galore: The Bernina Express

Route: Chur, Switzerland, to Tirano, Italy
Duration: 4 hours, 14 minutes
www.raileurope.com

This narrow-gauge, vertigo-inducing train takes on seven-percent inclines, a 360-degree spiral, 55 tunnels, and 196 bridges—reaching an apex of 7,391 feet and then descending 5,905 feet before coming to a stop. The word “express” refers to the availability of short-notice seat reservations, rather than the train’s velocity as it courses through the Alps south from Switzerland’s oldest town to a charming Italian town of just under 10,000 people. Part of the route is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

A Hotel on Wheels: Francisco de Goya

Route: Paris to Madrid
Duration: 13 hours, 30 minutes
www.elipsos.com

Leave Paris in the evening, enjoy a three-course dinner and the increasingly rural scenery, slumber to the soothing rhythm of the rails, and wake the next day as you arrive in Madrid, rested and ready to tour the third-most-populous city in the European Union. Grand class includes a welcome drink, gourmet dinner, breakfast, and an in-room bathroom with shower.

Reliving the Age of Chivalry: The Castles of Britain

Route: Inverness, Scotland, to Gwynedd, Wales
Duration: 15 days
www.britishheritagepass.com/castles

Discover the United Kingdom’s historic fortresses on this itinerary combining a two-week BritRail pass with the Great British Heritage pass. You’ll get entry to 580 attractions, as you hop off for local touring. Start in Inverness, Scotland, near Loch Ness, to tour Urquhart Castle. Continue south to Stirling Bridge, where William Wallace triumphed over the English in 1297, and on to Edinburgh Castle. English sights include Dover Castle, with its wartime tunnels. In Gwynedd, Wales, tour Caernarfon Castle, a World Heritage site where the investiture of Prince Charles was held.

The Epic Journey: Trans-Siberian Railway

Route: Moscow to Vladivostok, Russia
Duration: 19 days
www.trans-siberia.com

This fabled route, an icon of Russian culture, crosses eight time zones to connect the Russian capital with a port on the Pacific Ocean. On board, poor mingle with rich, young with old, foreigners with locals. Social barriers disappear as passengers share a unique rail experience—and shots of $3-a-liter vodka. You can book a private car via a tour operator for added comfort; schedule any number of side excursions from trekking and scuba diving to city tours.

Waterworld: The Flam Railway

Route: Flam to Myrdal, Norway
Duration: 1 hour
www.visitflam.com

A must-do on any tour of fjord country, the Flam Railway, rising from a village on the shores of Aurlandsfjord, mounts a steeper climb than any other non-cog, normal-gauge railroad in the world. In just 12 miles, the train climbs over 2,838 feet to reach the mountain plateau of Myrdal in under an hour. See the Rjoandefossen waterfall with a free drop of 459 feet, and the Kjosfossen waterfall, plunging 305 feet, where the train makes a photo stop during the summer.

Bavarian Bullet: InterCity-Express (ICE)

Route: Munich to Nuremberg, Germany
Duration: 1 hour
www.bahn.de

Want to go fast? This high-speed wonder zooms you between two historic Bavarian cities at speeds up to 199 miles an hour. “It’s amazing to watch the landscape change so quickly,” says Gillian Seely, a Boston resident who traveled widely by rail while living in Europe for 22 years. “The train is completely quiet inside,” she says. “Vibrations are barely enough to cause ripples in your strong German coffee.” In December, visit various German cities via the ICE rail network to take in traditional Christmas markets selling seasonal foods, handmade gifts, and gluhwein, a mulled spiced wine.

The Elegance of Yesteryear: Venice Simplon-Orient-Express

Route: London to Venice
Duration: Two days, one night
www.orient-express.com

Step aboard the VSOE, as the train is known, and the calendar turns back to the 1920s and ’30s, the golden age of rail on the Continent. The operator spent $16 million restoring 35 sleeping cars to their original art deco sophistication; passengers are expected to dress elegantly for dinner: at a minimum, suit and tie for men and the equivalent for women; black tie and gowns encouraged. Awake to the sight of the snowcapped Alps and learn the story behind each of the restored carriages.

Roughing it by Rail: Balkan Flexipass

Route: Belgrade, Serbia, to Bar, Montenegro
Duration: 10 hours, this leg
www.raileurope.com

Explore the heart of the former Yugoslavia via a Balkan Flexipass (which offers unlimited travel for five, ten, or 15 days through Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey). Start in Belgrade, with its glitzy all-night club scene, hop off at any of various stops to shop or overnight, then board a later train to continue on to sleepy Bar, an ancient town influenced by various conquering cultures on the sun-swathed Adriatic. “Relax, and budget extra time for the inevitable delays,” says Chris Deliso, a travel writer who lives in Macedonia. “The trains are run-down, and the local characters you meet are salt-of-the-earth types.”

Luxury on Wheels: The Transylvanian Odyssey

Route: London to Istanbul, Turkey
Duration: 8 days (including stays in Budapest and Istanbul)
www.danube-express.com

At the top of the food chain among European trains is the Danube Express, a private train with classical elegance, modern conveniences, and fine dining. On this route, which begins in Budapest after your flight from London, you penetrate the heart of Transylvania and enjoy a walking tour of the medieval town that was the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler. Eventually you approach Istanbul along the Bosporus, where the Topkapi Palace marks the skyline.

Gilded dining cars and white-glove service help us remember the golden era of train travel

Credit: Courtesy of Rovos RailCredit: Flickr/Steve Bowbrick

By Nicole Campoy-Leffler via The Daily Meal

Back before we could book flights from an app on our iPhone in the cab on the way to the airport, there was train travel. And while the days of getting dressed for dinner and retreating, post-Cognac, to a smoking lounge may have largely been replaced by modern day conveniences (non-smoking airplanes, frozen pizzas for one), there is one mode of transit still holding on to the true meaning of luxury travel — trains.

The romance of traveling by train now exists primarily because we don’t have to go that way, we can choose to. When traveling cross-country for business, for example, you’d probably not choose to take a multi-day train trip for a single day of meetings. Spending a week of your holiday staring at picturesque views rolling past, dining on gourmet meals in a sumptuous setting, and sleeping in an over-sized, fully decked out train suite, on the other hand, is a perfect way of enjoying your journey as well as your destination.

Of course, not all trains can offer the gilded extravagances of South Africa’s Rovos Rail. Commuters in the U.S. are lucky if the “dining car” (or cart) hasn’t run out of milk by the time they’re ordering a morning coffee. But book a ticket on the Royal Canadian Pacific railway, and enjoy superbly crafted meals with well-thought-out wine pairings at dinner before pulling the red and gold curtains closed and tucking into bed in your cozy sleeper suite.

Likewise, not all views enhance a train trip. That’s securely not the case when riding The Ghan railway in Australia. The Australian outback provides an unparalleled backdrop for the green and gold dining car’s meals — no matter how fast you’re powering through it.

If you think about it, trains are the most glamorous way of having breakfast in one port, lunch in another, and dinner in yet another. Plus, you get to skip the TSA.

Click here to see the 10 Luxury Trains Around the World Slideshow