Venice Simplon-Orient-Express: all aboard the world’s most glamorous train journey

A night on board the iconic train costs almost €8,500. Here’s what it’s like...

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express

Dylan Jones
©Evening Standard

In the same way that I’ve never really embraced the notion of guilty pleasures — if you like something then surely you like something, regardless how embarrassing it might be (and I say this as a huge fan of the 2009 film The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds) — so I’ve never really entertained the idea of the gap year or bucket list.

The gap year seems to me to be yet another misguided millennial birthright, the idea that higher education was so stressful, and the prospect of full-time employment so daunting that the obvious recourse is to spend 12 months getting drunk in as many foreign places as possible. Mad.