One Destination: Two Highlights - Add to the romance of Italy by travelling aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express
If something is worth doing, the Italians seem to say, then don’t just do it well. Why not add some sparkle and make it really special. If you’re going to visit Venice, for instance, then add in a journey aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. Even before you arrive, you will have acclimatised to the Italian sense of occasion, lunching in style on pasta and Prosecco while rolling through the vineyards that produced your wine.
The train pulls into Santa Lucia station (its name alone has a romantic, gondoliers’ song ring). There, by the Grand Canal, your launch awaits: anywhere else, you would now transfer to your hotel. But here, you embark on a voyage, gliding past magnificent palaces with balconies where you can imagine revellers gathering for a masked ball.
With a setting worthy of a movie at Venice’s annual film festival, Hotel Cipriani is poised on the tip of Giudecca island, overlooking the lagoon. Everything about the hotel is supremely romantic, from the waterside restaurants, with intriguing boats drifting past as you dine, to rooms decorated with sumptuous silks and wafer-thin Murano glass.
Even better, why not fly out to Venice and then return on the train. This way you simply carry on the party spirit you began at Florian’s in St Mark’s Square. A special programme sees you spending two nights luxuriating at the Cipriani, after which you make a languorous, leisurely journey back home. Instead of returning to London frazzled from a flight you arrive back in grand style, having indulged in Chef Christian Bodiguel’s famous lobster thermidor.
Why would you want to travel any other way?
