Should you book a luxury train? An honest answer.
We get asked this constantly and the honest answer disappoints about half the people who ask.
A luxury train is a wonderful thing and it is a different holiday from the one most people think they are booking. It is a fixed route on a fixed clock with a fixed group of fellow passengers. You see a great deal. You decide almost nothing. Days are structured around getting the whole carriage off the train, into coaches, around a site and back on schedule.
Some travellers love exactly that, and if you are one of them you will have an excellent week and should stop reading.
Others realise on the third morning that they cannot linger anywhere, cannot change anything, and cannot have a quiet dinner away from the group. That realisation is expensive at that point.
The middle path that suits most people: one scenic leg on a good ordinary train, in a good class, as an experience rather than as transport. The rest by car and the occasional flight. You get the romance, and you keep the ability to stay another night somewhere you liked.
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