The Alpina Journal

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express costs from €4,510 per person for one night from Paris to Venice in 2027, from €9,510 for three nights with a Belmond hotel and €20,940 for five nights to Istanbul. Here is every published route price, what the fare includes, the current offers, and how to ride the carriages for less.

Switzerland's five great scenic trains ranked for 2027, from Glacier Express Excellence Class at about CHF 874 to the CHF 49 Prestige seat on the GoldenPass Express, with honest verdicts, booking windows, and how a ten-day journey puts them together.

GoldenPass Express Prestige Class costs CHF 49 on top of a first class ticket and gives you heated seats, facing the direction of travel, raised 40 cm above the carriage. Worth it almost every time, but it is a seat, not a service, and this is how it compares with Glacier Express Excellence and Bernina Pullman.

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express starts at €4,510 per person for one night from Paris to Venice in 2027; La Dolce Vita Orient Express runs one to four nights out of Rome in 1960s Italian style. Which to book depends on whether you want the carriages or the country, and I set out both honestly, with the hotel-led alternative.

Switzerland wins for a luxury train holiday because its panoramic trains are the holiday. Austria wins if the trip is about Vienna and you want to travel by Nightjet. The trains, passes, hotels and costs side by side, and how a train holiday in Switzerland and Austria combined works.

Yes. Zurich to Rovaniemi overland takes about three and a half days, with three nights on board: Nightjet to Hamburg, trains to Copenhagen and Stockholm, the ferry to Helsinki and the Santa Claus Express north. Here is the route, the cabins and where the igloos really are.

Take a morning Bernina Express from St. Moritz to Tirano in first class, lunch in Italy and come back by regional train. About two and a quarter hours each way, a seat reservation from CHF 32, and since 2026 a Pullman Class carriage with a winery lunch.

Landing in Zurich after 22 hours from Sydney or Melbourne, go straight to Lake Lucerne: the direct train from the airport takes about 70 minutes, Bürgenstock is reached by boat and funicular, and the Glacier Express belongs on day five or six, once you are awake enough to see it.

The GoldenPass Express in Prestige Class, Montreux to Interlaken in 3 hours 15 minutes for a CHF 49 supplement, is the best Swiss train journey for a honeymoon. Here is why it beats the Glacier Express for most couples, and when it does not.

Excellence Class is a CHF 590 reservation on top of a first class Glacier Express ticket, about CHF 874 per person for 2027 dates. Here is what it includes, how the booking calendar really works, and who should keep the money for the hotel.

Europe’s luxury trains ranked for 2027, from the CHF 874 day on the Glacier Express to the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express at £3,885 a night, with the hotel-led alternative that costs less per night than any of them.

The Rocky Mountaineer is a daylight-only train from CAD 3,115 per person for two days and a night in Kamloops. Five alternatives compared on price per day.

September is the best all-round month and it is not close. June is the most underrated. November is the one I actively discourage, because the Glacier Express is not running and half the alpine hotels are shut. A month-by-month guide built on the operator calendars, not the weather averages.

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is extraordinary and it costs from GBP 3,800 per person for a single night between Paris and Venice. Five alternatives, compared honestly on price per night, from La Dolce Vita and the Royal Scotsman to the best value in European rail.

Two people, ten days, five-star hotels and first class rail comes to roughly CHF 13,000 to CHF 17,000 before flights. Here is the full breakdown at public 2026 rates, including the mountain railway fares that quietly ruin budgets.

A Switzerland tour for a third of the price is a fair question, and it has a factual answer. Count the nights, ask which class the trains are, and find out whether the mountains are in the price. The comparison is closer than the headline suggests, and it is not the bargain that wins it.

The Glacier Express and the Bernina Express are the two most famous train journeys in Switzerland. They share a valley, a railway company and a UNESCO listing, but the experiences they offer are fundamentally different.

Switzerland has the densest and most beautiful rail network in the world. Planning a journey through it is not complicated, but the details matter more than people expect. Here is everything I have learned from doing it repeatedly.

The most extraordinary food cities in Europe, from Paris and Bordeaux to Lyon, Bologna, Florence and Milan, lie along a continuous rail corridor between the Atlantic and the Adriatic. You can eat your way through all of them without once checking in for a flight.

The Glacier Express takes about eight hours between Zermatt and St. Moritz and costs CHF 220 per person in second class, CHF 338 in first and about CHF 874 in Excellence Class for 2027 dates. The route station by station, which class is worth it, the 93-day booking window, and when the train does not run.

After years of staying in Swiss hotels for work and for Alpina, I have a short list of properties that genuinely change how guests feel about travel. These are the five I recommend without hesitation.

The Northern Lights are not a guarantee. They are a probability you can improve dramatically with the right location, the right timing, and the right attitude. Here is what a decade of winter travel to Norway has taught me.

Night trains are back. After two decades of decline they are returning to European rail networks, and I think they represent something important, and not only about travel.