The Alpina Journal

Europe’s luxury trains ranked for 2027, from the CHF 810 day on the Glacier Express to the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express at £3,885 a night, with the hotel-led alternative that costs less per night than any of them.

The Rocky Mountaineer is a daylight-only train from CAD 3,115 per person for two days and a night in Kamloops. Five alternatives compared on price per day.

September is the best all-round month and it is not close. June is the most underrated. November is the one I actively discourage, because the Glacier Express is not running and half the alpine hotels are shut. A month-by-month guide built on the operator calendars, not the weather averages.

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is extraordinary and it costs from GBP 3,800 per person for a single night between Paris and Venice. Five alternatives, compared honestly on price per night, from La Dolce Vita and the Royal Scotsman to the best value in European rail.

Two people, ten days, five-star hotels and first class rail comes to roughly CHF 13,000 to CHF 17,000 before flights. Here is the full breakdown at public 2026 rates, including the mountain railway fares that quietly ruin budgets.

A Switzerland tour for a third of the price is a fair question, and it has a factual answer. Count the nights, ask which class the trains are, and find out whether the mountains are in the price. The comparison is closer than the headline suggests, and it is not the bargain that wins it.

The Glacier Express and the Bernina Express are the two most famous train journeys in Switzerland. They share a valley, a railway company and a UNESCO listing, but the experiences they offer are fundamentally different.

Switzerland has the densest and most beautiful rail network in the world. Planning a journey through it is not complicated, but the details matter more than people expect. Here is everything I have learned from doing it repeatedly.

The most extraordinary food cities in Europe, from Paris and Bordeaux to Lyon, Bologna, Florence and Milan, lie along a continuous rail corridor between the Atlantic and the Adriatic. You can eat your way through all of them without once checking in for a flight.

The Glacier Express connects Zermatt to St. Moritz in eight unhurried hours through some of the most breathtaking scenery in Europe. Here is what fourteen journeys have taught me about making it perfect.

After years of staying in Swiss hotels for work and for Alpina, I have a short list of properties that genuinely change how guests feel about travel. These are the five I recommend without hesitation.

The Northern Lights are not a guarantee. They are a probability you can improve dramatically with the right location, the right timing, and the right attitude. Here is what a decade of winter travel to Norway has taught me.

Night trains are back. After two decades of decline they are returning to European rail networks, and I think they represent something important, and not only about travel.