Mention the Orient Express to most people, and you’re likely to conjure up visions of the private five-star luxury train — Belmond’s Venice Simplon-Orient-Express — whose meticulously restored coaches feature every conceivable Belle Epoque bell and whistle: acres of mirror-finish mahogany, sophisticated silver service, a pianist taking after-dinner requests at the lounge car’s baby grand.
That train primarily runs overnight excursions between Paris and Venice. For two travelers sharing a sleeper, prices start at 3,530 British pounds, or around $4,500 per person — but once a year, the V.S.O.E. takes five nights to retrace the classic route from Paris to Istanbul. For a solo traveler, the cost of admission is £35,000 — and that’s for the smallest cabin.
Thanks to Europe’s ongoing night train renaissance, though, it’s now possible for the first time in years to travel from Paris to Istanbul by regularly scheduled sleepers, with just two planned changes of trains, in Vienna and Bucharest. And not only can you book this D.I.Y. Orient Express online, you can reserve private sleeping compartments for the entire trip for less than $1,000.
It was a trip I had always wanted to take. And so, one balmy evening last July, I found myself under the soaring glass canopy of the Gare de l’Est in Paris — from which the first Orient Express departed 140 years earlier — with tickets in my pocket for a trip 2,000 miles east to the shores of the Bosporus, on an unbroken ribbon of rail.
