Ah, the romance of Venice! The glamour of the Orient Express! The mystery of gothic Prague! And how better to celebrate my recent wedding anniversary than to fly off with my old chum Neil for the trip of a lifetime while my wife enjoys some quality time at home rushing the kids to school or relaxing with a pile of ironing. Yes, yes, I know, but someone has to do it. And didn't she get to go to Pontin's in February?
Anyway, it will be a sentimental journey for one of us at least, because Neil came to Venice for his honeymoon in 1986. Come to think of it, I was his best man, so it's almost like fate, isn't it? Having said that, we draw the line at going out in a gondola together, and when we reach the hotel, one of our very first tasks is to ask our butler (I'm sorry, but this is the Cipriani) to swap the double bed for two smaller ones, explaining that, ha ha, we are married but not to each other. The butler is as unfazed by our squeamishness (and Ryanair luggage stickers) as he is gracious about our paltry tip, and pauses only to open the champagne with an understated flourish before gliding off to do our bidding, not to say bedding.
Jaw-droppingly classy though the Cipriani is (everyone has stayed here - kings, queens, Andy Warhol, Mrs Thatcher, Michael Winner), we manage to drag ourselves away from the chocolate fudge and palatial suite of nice rugs and baroque sofas and the biggest widescreen TV that it's possible to own without looking like a lottery-winner, and head out for a spot of sightseeing - or, as we say in English, wandering aimlessly. Venice is a beautiful place, with no end of wisteria and bridges and alleyways full of shops and flitting waiters, and of course you're never too far from a canal, so we boat it up to the Accademia and the Peggy Guggenheim to see how the Renaissance giants struggled with painting until Jackson Pollock came along and got the hang of it. Then there's just time to get back to the splendour of St Mark's, where we devote five minutes to browsing around what generations of scro fulous artisans sacrificed their entire lives to build, before sitting down for a well-earned drink in the square to the airs of a string quartet. All very soothing, though it turns out that Neil has bought some enchanted sunglasses, which, according to Venetian legend, lull the wearer into believing that euros are 10 to the old lira, a spell that remains unbroken until such time as we have spent £36 on four beers.
No one likes to leave Venice in a hurry but it is Wednesday and the Orient Express departs at 19.28, and the cocktails we downed in Harry's Bar an hour or so earlier are proving just the thing to make locating the right platform that bit more exciting for those of us whose itinerary is buried in our suitcase somewhere. But at last we are being welcomed aboard the sleek, liveried voiture-lit by our personal steward, Richard, who this evening is wearing a powder blue uniform, matching pillbox hat and white gloves. Neil, who has forgotten everything he has read in the brochure about not alarming the other passengers ('Smart daywear is the custom'!), has changed into an embroidered black shirt, a pair of red-and-white checked flared trousers and what look suspiciously to me like trainers.
As promised, our compartment is a sumptuous triumph of 1930s style, appointed with polished woods and gleaming brass and tasselled furnishings and dinky reading lamps and hideaway washing facilities, but it is rather compact, as we discover when it comes to dressing for dinner and both need to use our elbows at the same time. No matter: if we take it in turns to hang from the luggage rack while the other fastens his shoelaces it's possible to reduce the chance of having an ear removed by the coat hooks every time the train goes round a corner. Socks are a problem, though, as is my bow tie - a proper, rather suave one that I have foolishly borrowed from my Observer colleague Euan ('It's really easy to tie...'), which despite the two of us carefully following the baffling step-by-step diagram eight times in the steamed-up mirror, makes me look more like Rab C. Nesbitt than James Bond. Neil is a quite hopeless valet, though he is a master of taking photographs of people when they are suffering a sense of humour failure. However, it is now officially 8.25pm and if only to avoid drowning in our own sweat, we summon Richard, who valiantly tries out every permutation of loop and sheep shank before calling the manager, who can tie a proper dicky bow, though apparently not somebody else's. Eventually, he gives a wider smile than you might hope for from a man who has more important things to do and announces that he has a nice Velcro one he can lend me...
Dinner time. And such is the novelty of having a couple of chaps sharing facilities that the maître d' has kindly arranged for us to walk the gauntlet of three packed dining cars full of glittery evening gowns and diamonds before we arrive at our table à deux , shimmering there in the dark of the window with its silver knives and crystal and white napery amid the etched mirrors and marquetry and brocades and fringes and well-hoovered carpets patrolled by discreet gold-braided servants of the line. It's at times like this that a gentleman is glad he decided to splash out on the £15 dinner suit he found on eBay.
Waiter, the menu!
The food is superb, which is just as well because there are five courses of it. It is the weirdest thing, though, whizzing along in evening wear like this, murmuring about Leeds United's relegation battle and tucking into sea bass with saffron risotto as though this is somehow normal behaviour. Neil says it's like being in that film. And though none of our fellow travellers has actually grown a waxed moustache for the occasion, what we look like is unmistakably reflected in the faces of baguette-munching rail travellers on the platforms of every provincial station we pull into. Some wave, others sit up to stare, as though the entertainment has arrived. Still, this is the life. Or, at least, the life as it once was.
The train clatters on into the night, and at last we're done with pudding and swaying down the carriages to the 'bar car', where a pianist is treating a packed audience to a medley of ragtime favourites. This is the bit, I think, where we relax and mingle with the other guests, where amusing references to our wives and six children might naturally arise, though this is going to be tricky in a bar that, inescapably, is the same shape as a train carriage. But we order a couple of beers and survey the long harbour of animated faces, the froth of white shirts and black ties and billowing sails of chiffon and glimmer of BacoFoil. Who are they in real life, I wonder? Silver-haired captains of management, I'd say, topiaried Rotarians and their wives, younger anniversary couples, City party people, dowagers in their silk shawls, luxury cruise passengers or murder mystery weekenders who have wandered in from another film. We squeeze on to a couch opposite an American couple, who I'm afraid are taking too mesmerised a delight in the tune from The Sting to risk too much eye contact, which is a pity because I would genuinely like to know if the lady's interesting evening bag (largely fashioned from two teddy bears) has been brought along as some sort of dare. Never mind.
'Can you play "Spanish Eyes"?' a woman is asking the piano player. Yes, he can! And the theme from Doctor Zhivago plus a variety of sticky waltzes and tangos and polkas and mazurkas before galloping through a selection of silent-movie music of the sort that might accompany Laurel and Hardy trying to put trousers on in a railway compartment. 'Ask him if he knows any Meat Loaf,' mutters Neil, for whom the effort of exchanging strained rictuses with me is beginning to take its toll. But on we go, the tinkle of glasses and laughter, the warm applause, the starry delight, until we have drained the friendly French barman of his Czech Pilsner and it is time to climb yawning into our bunks.
Chuffety-chuff, chuffety-chuff... I'm no stranger to nodding off on a train (mouth open, dribbling all the way past my stop), but there is clearly something about travelling sideways with your ear this near to the ground that is inimical to sleep, something about the swaying and bumping and the bang of the door on our bijou ablution closet every time we go over a humpback bridge that keeps me tossing and turning, trying to work out just where all the shaking is coming from. I know this is a romantic excursion for most passengers on board, but is it conceivable that everyone is having sex at the same time?
Next morning, Neil says he didn't get a wink, though I must have dropped off for a while, because how else could I wake up from the dream about being trapped in a tumble drier and see him coming back from the toilet down the corridor in his free Orient Express kimono and slippers? I think the piano player must have given us too much cheese.
After a huge, delicious breakfast, we forgo the scenery (the industrial backwaters of eastern Germany) in favour of dozing in our cabin, emerging only for a huge, delicious lunch. Yum. I am interested to know how the chef constructs hundreds of little layered creamy deserts each in its own block of ice sitting in a swirl of raspberry coulis with slivers of star fruit topped with a filigree of spun toffee in a kitchen the size of a double coffin. We get off the train a stone heavier.
What a grand old time we have in Prague, courtesy of the hot weather, the glorious buildings and the cheapness of everything. Our hotel (the Palace, a restored Art Nouveau establishment with excellent breakfasts, marble bathrooms and choice of spiritually unhealthy porn channels) offers a guided coach tour up to the castle, but after pretending to be one of the idle rich for the past 48 hours, using our own legs suddenly seems like a good idea. So off we go, through the big square with the famous clock with the figures that come trooping out, across the bridge and up the hill, chatting.
Prague brings out the inner philosopher, and - here's a coincidence - we have no sooner finished discussing how weird it is that there are more people living on Earth now than have ever died, than we find most of them trying to get into the cathedral at the same time as us! Still, we manage to shuffle in eventually. Nice stained glass. Nice buttresses. Nice cherubs.
No visit to Prague is complete without a concert of classical music, though ours is. Culture-wise, however, we do manage another couple of churches and stumble upon a brilliant exhibition of Sixties abstract book jackets, and after a light supper of lard, sauerkraut and dumplings, take a tour of the city's architecturally important bars till four in the morning.
Next day, after breakfast, there's just time to buy some souvenir scorpions for the children_ oh, and a dicky bow from Tie Rack, just off Wenceslaus Square. Then, at one, a coach takes us to Prague station, where a quartet of musicians sporting what I think must be traditional yellow pantaloons are waiting to give us a VIP send- off with some of the best oompah music known to people with a hangover. How thoughtful. And, under such circumstances, it would be churlish to stick a sock in a chap's bassoon.
Not to worry. We climb aboard the Orient Express for the journey home. If first-class travel is something you can get used to, we will definitely sleep tonight.
Factfile
A seven-day, six-night package with Orient Express Journeys of Distinction (0845 077 2222) costs from £2,140 per person including a flight on British Airways to Venice, two nights' B&B at the Hotel Cipriani, one night on the Venice-Simplon Orient Express travelling Venice to Prague, two nights' B&B at the Palace Hotel, Prague, and one night on the train back to London. All meals on the train are included.
