Three great rail journeys
To Mongolia and beyond
Running 5,700 miles from Moscow to Vladivostok, the Trans-Siberian railway is the “godfather” of railways. But more interesting is the Trans-Mongolian, which drops down through Mongolia and ends in Beijing, giving interesting opportunities for onward travel, says Monisha Rajesh in The Guardian. There are cheap services on the route, but their hard beds and lack of heating and air conditioning can prove irksome. So if possible, book on the “fancy” Rossiya service, with its soft-cushioned berths, automatic doors and heated toilets. Stops include Russian cities such as Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and – deep in Siberia – Irkutsk, from which you can take a “fabulous” old steam locomotive along the shores of Lake Baikal, the world’s largest and deepest freshwater lake (dubbed “the Galápagos of Russia” for its unique species of flora and fauna). Also worth a couple of days is Ulaanbaatar, a city in “economic overdrive” thanks to Mongolia’s mineral wealth. Real Russia (realrussia.co.uk) can help with train tickets, hotel reservations and visa applications.
Following the Habsburg coffee trail
The Austro-Hungarian Empire saw Europe’s first coffee craze in the late 17th century, and from the mid-19th century onwards, coffee beans were transported from the port of Trieste to Vienna via the world’s first Alpine railway. The major cities along that route (spanning modern-day Austria, Slovenia and Italy) all retain their historic grandeur, as well as a uniquely strong café culture – making a journey along it a treat for coffee addicts and architecture buffs alike, says Julia Brookes in The Times. Among Vienna’s dozen historic coffeehouses are Cafe Central, with its “glorious” neo-Renaissance interior, and Café Landtmann, which was once favoured by Sigmund Freud. All have tuxedoed waiters, and “luscious” cream cakes as well as a range of delicious coffee varieties. Next stop is Graz, with its “immaculately preserved” old town and “hipster” cafés such as Tribeka and Café of the Murinsel. Then comes Ljubljana, where the 1920s architecture of Jože Plecnik is a delight, and, finally, Trieste itself. Among its finest old cafés are Specchi and San Marco, beloved of James Joyce. His favourite pastry there was the presnitz, made with walnuts and dried fruit. Inntravel (inntravel.co.uk) has an eight-night trip from £995 per person.
Across America, from sea to shining sea
You can fly from New York to San Francisco “in the space of a movie and a quick nap”, but it’s immeasurably more exciting to take the train, says Anthony Sattin in Condé Nast Traveller – for the “babel” of accents, the stories you collect, the days and nights spent watching the landscape shift, and the overview it gives you of America “in all its huge and glorious diversity”. Schedule at least a day and night in Chicago, with its dazzling skyscrapers (the 1920s Jewelers’ Building was designed so that you could drive your limo into the lift up to your front door), then take the California Zephyr on to the Pacific coast, a journey of 2,438 miles in 51 scheduled hours. Between Denver and Salt Lake City is the most beautiful track: it “climbs into mountains, twists along rivers and cuts through sheer canyons”. Enjoyable stops beyond that include Truckee (where the main street looks “like a set from
High Noon”) for Lake Tahoe and the hot springs nearby, and the casino city of Reno, which is more fun these days thanks to the annual Burning Man Festival held in the desert outside it. Visit
amtrak.com for information on trains.