The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
My rail trip to the Alps in grand style
Whether you aim to ski or not, the new Venice Simplon-Orient-Express service is the height of luxury, says Steven King
Lovers of winter sports and linen tablecloths – and red carpets, white gloves, polished brass, gleaming marquetry, velvet upholstery and all the other trappings of a train de luxe – rejoice. The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (VSOE) has launched a 21-hour, once-a-year itinerary from Paris to Bourg-Saint-Maurice in the heart of the French Alps.
Options for getting from the UK to the slopes by rail are limited, to say the least. There is the Eurostar Snow Train service, which runs once a week in season and requires a change of train in Lille; and there is the regular Eurostar to Paris, followed by a TGV.
The new route, which runs in late December, provides a third option and reflects a growing enthusiasm for slow, green and experiential travel. Getting from the UK to the French Alps by plane takes about two hours and generates at least 250kg of CO2. The train takes more than eight hours but generates less than 12kg of CO2.
However, it is the experience that sets the VSOE apart – indeed, puts it in a class of its own. And with the tariff for a top compartment for two at just shy of £10,000 per person and places onboard selling out months in advance, you would jolly well hope so.
It is a glorious throwback to a mode of travel grown so unfamiliar as to have become novel again. So old-fashioned it is new-fashioned. This includes the historically authentic Heritage Cabins. They are gorgeous. Jewel-like marvels of thoughtful, elegant design. But tiny.
First-timers are often taken aback. (“Really? That’s it? And no shower? And a shared loo at the end of the carriage?”) Hence the popularity of the recently introduced Suite and Grand Suite categories, which are respectively about two and three times bigger than Heritage Cabins, and have their own bathrooms. I have travelled in each of these categories and can tell you that any additional space in your compartment makes a disproportionate difference. Most VSOE itineraries, like this one, are overnighters, with a handful of exceptions including Paris to Istanbul, which takes five nights.
I started with a night in Paris, having arrived via Eurostar. Because of the meticulously stage-managed nature of the whole VSOE performance, the before and after parts of the holiday can suffer in comparison. Not, however, on this occasion. I got off on absolutely the right foot at the Plaza Athénée. Though the hotel is famous for its window boxes overflowing with red geraniums (apparently the happy consequence of Marlene Dietrich’s affair with Jean Gabin), its inner courtyard was no less delightful in its wintertime guise, as an ice-skating rink illuminated by cascades of fairy lights suspended from the rooftops. Combine that coup de théâtre with a sumptuous Second Empirestyled suite, a treatment at the luscious new Dior Spa and dinner at Jean Imbert au Plaza Athénée and I could almost have stayed put and forgotten about the Alps altogether.
But the mountains were calling. The train left Gare de l’Est at 15.20. A couple of hours later we were somewhere in the Champagne region, following the course of the River Marne in the twilight. I raised a glass of fizz to the terroir outside from which it had sprung. The sky and the water were silvery blue, the rest of the landscape shadowy and indistinct. Soon it would be dark. The train’s windows would turn into mirrors, blinds would be drawn.
I remembered a previous trip from Paris to Venice taken in the summer. It had an entirely different feel – more, I think, because of the season than the route. We were encouraged in advance to leap out of bed at dawn to admire the sun as it rose over – or rather between and around – the Alps. Of the early birds who did make an appearance around 5am, several were still in their pyjamas. Somehow, though, this contributed more to the joyful tone of the occasion than all the dinner jackets and spangled party frocks of the previous night put together.
If this winter journey was necessarily more tucked-up and inward-looking, it was no less convivial. There is only one sell-out service, in the week before Christmas, and it is the VSOE’s last run of the year. The staff were excited about going home for the holidays while the passengers were excited about spending the festive season away from home, some in Chamonix, others in Courchevel and Val Thorens. The excitement increased as we got further into the mountains – and was mirrored in the expressions on the faces of local commuters unaccustomed to seeing the glossy blue carriages glide past.
Everyone on the train, it seemed, was singing most of the time – even the chef. Jean Imbert, the tousled French prodigy who succeeded Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée in 2022, was recruited to oversee the VSOE’s kitchen the next year. I chose to stay at the Plaza Athénée for that reason: I wanted to compare Imbert’s hotel and train cooking. But the result of my delicious experiment was inconclusive. Dinner in the plush, ornately mirrored dining car on the train was as satisfying as dinner in the plush, ornately mirrored dining room at the hotel. (On the train: leeks with black truffle, egg yolk and parmesan shortbread; Bresse chicken with Albufera sauce; hazelnut and coffee Yule log. At the hotel: brioche with caviar; lobster à l’américaine; plum soufflé pancakes.)
“The problem with cooking at the hotel,” Imbert said, “is that I’ve got everything I could ever need at my disposal. The problem with cooking on the train is that I haven’t.” Which must be the only respect in which the VSOE observes a less-is-more policy.
I alighted at Moûtiers, the gateway to the gigantic Trois Vallées ski area, on the dot of 11.38. A short drive brought me to Méribel, an extremely prepossessing resort. Trading my gently swaying suite for stationary pisteside luxury, I bunked down at Le Coucou (lecoucoumeribel.com). Its ski-in/ski-out location was unimprovable; the staff was young and friendly; the look of the hotel at once respectful of its context and endearingly playful.
Nobody needs a reason to take the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. But if you did, getting to Méribel in fine style for Christmas and New Year would be as good as any.
Steven King was a guest of the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, Hôtel Plaza Athénée, Méribel Tourisme and Hôtel Le Coucou. The next departure of the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (0800 058 1237; belmond.com) to the French Alps is on Dec 19 2024. It leaves Paris Gare de l’Est at 15.20 and calls at Albertville (10.36), Moûtiers (11.38) and Bourg-Saint-Maurice (12.45). Prices start at £3,785pp based on two sharing a Historic Cabin; £7,300pp for a Suite; and £9,975pp for a Grand Suite.
Hotel du Couvent
Nice, France
Marseilles has the cool, Cannes and St Tropez the glitz, but Nice has always been less of a show-off – all dreamy light and grand Belle Epoque villas. It is here this summer that hotelier Valéry Grégo, the man behind the effortlessly hip Les Roches Rouges down the coast, opens his latest hotel, an ambitious project in a 17th-century former convent that had been shuttered for almost 40 years. Set in 2.5 acres of terraced gardens in Nice’s Old Town, the hotel will be a sanctuary with Roman-inspired thermal baths, an in-house herbalist (a nod to the convent’s ancient apothecary), 88 soothingly monastic bedrooms and plenty of space for quiet contemplation among the olive, apricot and lemon trees in the gardens.
Opens summer; rates TBA (hotelducouvent.com)
Casa Monti
Rome, Italy
Rome has been a boomtown on the hotel front recently, with splashy openings from Soho House, Bulgari, W and Edition. Casa Monti, however, is the antithesis of these head-turning newcomers, located among the vintage shops and wine bars in the narrow cobbled alleys of the Rione Monti neighbourhood. The idea is for it to feel like an artist’s home, and the 36 bedrooms – decorated by Parisian interior designer Laura Gonzalez – creatively pair pattern and colour. The rooftop bar looks set to become an in-the-know hangout. Opens spring; doubles from £388 (casamontiroma.com)
Gundari
Folegandros, Greece
With its dramatic exposed cliffs and just a single main road snaking down the island, Folegandros is a world away from the sunset-selfie-seeking crowds of neighbouring Santorini. The name of this new hotel on its south coast is inspired by the word “Giundari”, meaning rocky land, which the Phoenicians used to describe the island. The raw wildness of Folegandros is captured in the simple white-on-wood interiors of the 25 suites, each with its own infinity pool looking out from its cliffside perch towards the horizon. Gundari has a holistic wellness programme incorporating wild native herbs, as well as a farm-to-table restaurant using ingredients sourced from the hotel’s own organic farm.
Opens May; doubles from £520 (gundari.com)
Vestige Son Ermitá & Binideufá Menorca, Spain
In the north of Menorca, these two neighbouring fincas are being brought back to life by the Vestige Collection, run by the Madera Fernandez family, who have a very special clutch of painstakingly restored historic castles and houses across Spain and its islands. While many of Vestige’s properties are beautiful private retreats for buy-out rentals, it added its first hotel, Son Vell, in Ciutadella, Menorca last year. Here in Ferreries, the two renovated estates will have 22 bedrooms spread across the farmhouses and its outbuildings to form one hotel, the gateway to a go-slow
rural experience with an authentic Balearic Islands flavour.
Opens June; rates TBA (vestigecollection.com)
Hotel Borsari
Martigny, Switzerland
Near the French border in the southern corner of Switzerland’s Valais region, Martigny is as Swiss as fondue, all ruddy-cheeked mountain trails, with a rich art scene and thermal water springs. It is these waters that Hotel Borsari taps into, with incredible underground baths constructed in former wine tanks. Despite channelling the town’s ancient Gallo-Roman history and bathing culture, the look will be crisply modern – the hotel will be a member of Design Hotels – while the 180 restaurant will delve into regional cuisine using ingredients sourced within a 180km radius. Opens spring; rates TBA (designhotels.com)