Magic on the Orient Express

Right now, tonight, on this moonlit night, I am dreaming of trains, and specifically the luxury train to end all trains: the Orient Express. Last summer I took my teenagers on an unforgettable epic journey, a trip to a magical world we had only read about in books.

Last year, I turned 50, and my best friend, Kim and I had had been planning to do something epic for my half-century birthday. The world was our oyster, and we spent many hours talking about all our travel dream fantasies, but life had a different plan in store for us.

My world turned upside down. I lost my father to cancer, my marriage to infidelity, and Kim to suicide. The kids and I were devastated by the deaths of our beloveds and the searing divorce. Reeling with grief, we needed something bright on the horizon. I didn’t know what to do or how to make it through the thick swamp of grief for all of us, but I knew I loved to travel and I adore planning a trip. When the kids were little and we’d go to Disney, my ex would say I became a general planning a military strategy, reserving dinner in a castle with a princess, breakfast with a talking bear, and a nighttime boat ride with storytelling pirates. So on my birthday, I created a treasure hunt for my kids and at the end, they found tickets (handmade by me) along with the book, Murder on the Orient Express. They screamed and jumped up and down and threw their arms around each other and me. As the mother of teenagers, I don’t get these moments often anymore. I like to consider myself a matador, able to handle their wild charging emotions with the swirl of a scarf and the tip of my hat. At least that’s how it is in my mind. Planning an epic trip gave us months of swirling scarves, as we spent many mealtimes talking about what wondrous things we would experience together. Here’s part of what I planned:

1. Venice, Italy to visit the atelier of my dream costume maker, Antonia Sautter, along with the Guggenheim and seeing an opera.
2. One glorious indulgent night taking my dream vintage train, the Orient Express, now called the Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express, through the Italian Dolomites to Paris.
3. Paris to see my favorite bookshop: Shakespeare and Co. and the Van Gogh paintings made of light so it feels like you are INSIDE the paintings.
4. Josephine Baker’s Castle, Chateau Des Milandes, near the Dordogne River.
5. Burgundy to see my favorite vineyards.

I counted all sections of the trip as “work” for me, since I was actually researching for my new mystery novel about the theft of costumes, The Champagne Scandal. Except for Burgundy, but that was my own personal research for the best wine to drink after a long day writing! Each section of our trip requires its own blog post, and I recently wrote about visiting Josephine Baker’s castle. This one is about our fairy tale adventure aboard the Orient Express.

I have always loved the style of the Golden Age of Travel: steamer trunks, hats and gloves, uniformed porters in darling hats carrying my gorgeous luggage, hatboxes, makeup cases, and the interaction that take can happen between people thrown together during a trip. And so I decided to create my own Golden Age of Travel with this trip. I couldn’t find the perfect luggage. I had it in my mind that it needed to be pink with a glittering martini glass on the front. Partly because I love cocktail style even though I’m not a big drinker, and partly because my first mystery novel is called Martini Mystery and my publishing company is called House of Martini, so I guess my love of a beautiful martini glass is evident. I don’t even like martinis, but I love martini style: a beautiful glass, the mixing and stirring and care that goes into making the perfect cocktail. So back to my luggage, I finally found the perfect sizes and perfect shades of pink luggage on Amazon–three suitcases for $100–seriously. I ordered the beauties and then painted my own martini glass on the front with iridescent gold paint and a dash of glitter, aka fairy dust. I loved the way they looked as we checked them, packed them, stacked them–in every instance they were beautiful, especially when sitting next to my hatboxes.

One of my favorite parts of the train trip was planning our outfits. I love vintage fashion and I have an entire closet full of vintage style dresses, hats, purses, gloves, and shoes. Incredibly, my suitcase easily held twenty pinup girl dresses and seven tutus! We had an one suitcase for the train: my silk velvet Garbo coat, marabou stole, long gloves, pearl bracelets and big diamond necklaces, and our long silk and sequin evening gowns. The kids and I had a ball planning their travel ensembles, shopping at my favorite shop in Salem, Modern Millie. And we found some fabulous flapper hats and a bowler for Henry at the fabulous steampunk shop in Salem, Emporium 52. When I lived in New Orleans, I had bought some spectacular hats at a shop in the French Quarter called Fleur De Paris. (I have written about this shop in other posts.) We devoted one entire suitcase just for the train, and carried two hatboxes full of hats, careful not to let the jaunty luscious plumes get smashed.

You can imagine that for a mystery writer who loves glamorous travel style, the first place they are going to head is straight to the Orient Express. Made famous in Agatha Christie’s brilliant mystery, Murder on the Orient Express, the train is legendary for its inspirational style, attracting artists, movie stars, filmmakers, and writers for more than a century. The storied train started rolling back in 1883, and passengers might see Tolstoy, Mata Hari, Marlene Dietrich, James Bond or even Dracula riding along with them. You can read more about the history here:

https://www.belmond.com/trains/europe/venice-simplon-orient-express/

On the morning of our train ride, we put on our outfits and caused quite a stir in the lobby of our hotel in Venice, The Bauer Palazzo, waiting to be picked up for our trip. (Part of the Orient Express service is picking you up at your hotel in a gorgeous wooden boat.) When the beautiful boat arrived with its gleaming wood, we all boarded and the bellhops tagged our luggage. With the warm wind ruffling our plumes and the light reflecting off the water, we were immediately swept into our own personal movie of sumptuous glamour and glitz.

When we arrived at the train station, we all walked to the train, and the kids quickly realized we were the only ones dressed up. “Mom!” They admonished me. “Why are we the only ones dressed up?” I shrugged as people all around us asked to take our pictures. This was another case of Marci Darling daydreaming about style for a particular event, and thinking everyone else would be thinking the same thing, and finding out once we were there that no one else was actually thinking about dressing up at all. Like the time I had us all wear fairy wings to a Midsumer Nights Dream production in the woods, because I had somehow gotten it into my head that everyone would be dressed as fairies. They weren’t. My kids are used to showing up to events overdressed, and I always tell them it’s better to be overdressed than underdressed. I’m not sure they agree, but it is what it is. They will have lot’s of stories when they grow up about their daydreaming mother. In any case, everyone at the train station seemed to be delighted by our quirky ensembles, and we posed for many photos in between the kids glaring at me.

The Orient Express is known for its stunning detail, and it didn’t disappoint. An elegant tea and snacks were set up in our cars. We were assigned an adorable porter who was wearing a crisp blue uniform, just like my Golden Age fantasy.We opened the door between our two cars and drank our tea and watched the Alps go by outside our windows. Shades of green, fields of wildflowers, waterfalls… I had bought the kids leather journals in Venice, and I gave them pens and told them to write what they were seeing.

We had a beautiful five-course lunch in one of the stunning cars, and met some of the other passengers. Everyone was so excited to be having such an incredible experience, that they were extremely friendly and open to meeting each other.

We returned to our cars to watch the mountains, well the kids did. I stopped on the way back to have a long talk with a very lovely woman I had just met. She was wearing white, tall and elegant, and something about the experience of being on the train together created an instant bond. I shared with her my grief, my fears, how lost I felt, and how we were all in a dream-state, mourning our massive losses. She shared with me her own heartbreak and soaring career, as I told her about my lack of paying career due to being a stay-at-home mom for 16 years. She assured me something magical was going to happen for me, and I so wanted to believe her. I returned to our car to rest and talk to the kids and get ready in our formal wear for our five-course dinner, with a chef so talented, my vegetable-hating son ate his entire plate proclaiming it was the “best asparagus he ever had.” We were assigned the “Lalique” car, which is a gorgeous french luxury crystal and glass style of decor.

Again, there was something incredibly magical about being on the exquisite train with the teenagers. We talked, we acted fancy, sipping our tea with out pinkies in the air, napkins in our lap, no elbows on the table. After dinner, we went to the raucous cocktail car where a pianist played jazz. The kids were half asleep at that point, which I discovered when I turned around and they were all laying sideways on their chairs with glassy eyes. Teenagers are funny, sometimes they are so grown-up, and sometimes they are like toddlers, clutching teddy bears and rubbing their eyes. When we returned to our rooms, we found our porter had flipped the plush couches into beds and set out pajamas and slippers. On my way back, I met my elegant friend eating dinner solo so I sat with her for a while and we talked. I knew all about her life, but I didn’t know her last name, and when I finally asked her name, it turns out she’s the head of a huge filmmaking company. She was traveling between film sets and on her way to a movie premiere in London. Glamorous indeed.

We fell asleep that night watching Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and the train rumbled along, rocking us with its rumbling. The next morning we arrived in Paris… but that’s a different story.

It’s been a year since our trip, and the kids light up when we talk about it. They talk about the coziness of the train, the lightning outside the window, and how they will never forget it. There were no murders on this particular train ride, but there was magic, and an experience we will carry with us for the rest of our lives.