All Aboard!: Orient Express, Day 5 & 6, (part C)

There we are, all dressed up and ready to enjoy a meal created by Michelin-star chef, Jean Imbert. Imbert is new to Belmond, having joined them at the start of the 2022 season, coming from Paris’ renowned Hotel Plaza Athenee. Billed as provided by purveyors at each stop and designed to accentuate the VSOE-specific experience, the meals are elaborate.

We had a choice of blue lobster served with vegetable soup with black truffle caviar or slow roasted Charolais beef fillet and bone marrow with Bordelaise sauce. Each was accompanied by an array of zucchini, eggplants, & tomato, and a Chayote squash au gratin. Everyone was invited to partake of a selection of cheeses and dessert was a chocolate cream and vanilla bavaroise with soft coffee heart on crunchy almonds with fresh mango coulis. When all of that was finished, we were presented with mignardises. All of the food was very good, although not perfect. Perhaps they oversold it a bit?

Service was excellent and attentive, a quality of the VSOE that was true in every case. The atmosphere was truly exceptional. The fabric-covered lamps glow, the linens are crisply luxurious, the fine china, silver, crystal gleam softly.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

When we returned to our cabin we found it converted into a bedroom with an upper and lower berth, our robes and slippers laid out for us to change into. It was super cozy and lovely. The beds are not as wide or long as what most of us call “twin.” Someone more than six feet tall would not be comfortable. I’m sure two people cuddling (or canoodling) would manage just fine, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to sleep together in one berth.

It’s a bit of a magic trick — where did all of this come from? How did it get put together? Here’s a cute picture from Belmond to give you an idea of what the cabins look like, before and after.

John took the top berth and Lisa the lower. You can hear some noise of people traveling the halls, and you can hear louder noises from neighboring cabins. Overall, however, you can’t hear normal conversations as long as the cabin doors are closed.

We both agree that the beds are more comfortable than many hotel beds. The pillows were excellent, and the bedding cozy. It was a little tricky keeping the room cool, but we ended up just opening the window behind the shade and it worked out well.

Warning: the rest of the trip did not go well for Lisa, and therefore not so much for John either. Skip this italicized part if you just want to know the next nice thing that happened.

Some part of the meal did not, shall we say? *agree* with Lisa, and she lost everything from the entire day in a series of violent upheavals. Not at all fun and we’re not going to have any more details than that. She basically slept until after noon the next day, and drowsed much of the time after the cabin had been put back to its day configuration. To top it off, she went right from food ill to getting the ‘flu (running a fever and all of that).

Not Fun.

End of icky section

John spent much of the night on alert to assist his wife, and also slept in very late the next day. Basically, if there was lovely scenery in Switzerland, we completely missed it. And breakfast, which we are told is very nice.

That said, we can both speak to the excellent service our steward provided. Helene was gracious about being woken at 3am to help, and even fetched the train doctor. (He provided Immodium, which wasn’t helpful, and a thermometer, which was.) Extra water was brought without being asked for, and we were able to cancel breakfast. Amusingly, she, being young and super healthy, was especially distressed that Lisa was missing out on all the yummy food. Helene took the initiative and put together a yogurt and berry tray to accompany Lisa’s fourth pot of mint tea. It was a good example of how tasty breakfast would have been, it’s true.

Meanwhile, John made it to the second lunch seating.

*shmancy lunch

By the time tea time arrived, Lisa felt well enough to have a bit of something more substantial. We enjoyed the tea (mint) and two dainty cakes. Not very much food, and a bit of a letdown after the magnificence of the tea we’d had the day prior. But John wasn’t particularly hungry after his lunch, so it’s a wise decision on the part of train management.

We spent the several hours of the afternoon reading and occasionally looking out at the scenery. Eventually the announcement came that we were nearing Santa Lucia Station. That’s the time to pack up all your things, settle your bar tab(s), and take care of gratuities. Helene stopped by not long before we arrived to tell us how we would be met on the platform by a local representative who would make sure we got our luggage and see us to our hotel.

We disembarked, thanking Helene profusely for her care and thanking everyone we met, to find our luggage already waiting for us. The local rep (we missed her name, sorry) was sweet and asked after Lisa’s health (the news had made the rounds, it seems). Part of the included service is a water taxi to your hotel, and we expected to be put on board one, but it was even better. We joined another couple and all of us, rep included, boarded a taxi (our bags were handled by the taxi staff). With no further ado we headed out into the Grand Canal. First stop was the other couple, just across the water from the station, and so we had the taxi almost to ourselves as we cruised along.

It was magical. All of the buildings lit from within and gleaming in that special way that light on water offers. It was a wonderful way to arrive in Venice.