Paris To Rome In Luxury…
Midnight Trains promises Madrid, Lisbon, Porto, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, starting as early as 2024.
While everyone else wants bullet trains, hypersonic jets, and the hope of teleportation a la Star Trek, getting you to your destination faster has become the quest, often forsaking all else. Cattle-car airline seats, indifferent service, and mediocre food (at best), the words glamour and travel have been out of sync since the flying boat Pan Am Clippers criss-crossed the Pacific.
But maybe not for long. Two French entrepreneurs are working to make train travel glamorous again, in overnight rides to major European cities. Not quite the bank account drain of the Orient Express, but their vision goes like this: party late in Paris, then enjoy a Midnight Trains to a lot of fun places, in high style!
The brainchild of Adrien Aumont and Romain Payet, the team behind French crowdfunding website KissKissBankBank, Midnight Trains is aiming to make the sleeper train cool again, by offering a sophisticated and luxurious experience aboard its fleet of ‘rolling boutique hotels’.
Focused squarely at the luxury travel market, Midnight Trains is something very different, a thing of beauty, a train with real sex appeal. Something that says park the Bentley.
As the destination has become more important than the journey, and I’ve come to believe in the equality, or at least the balance of what travel should mean.