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Home / TRIP IDEAS / Destination of the Year / Transatlantic Cruises and Gilded Trains: Return of the Travel of the Golden Age

Transatlantic Cruises and Gilded Trains: Return of the Travel of the Golden Age

2022-12-23  Tatiana Travis
A crowd of people in the dining car on the Orient Express Train

 

When someone asks you to consider the "Golden Age of Travel," you could have a lot of images in mind. A handheld bag filled with international postage stamps, a hotel elevator attendant wearing a dainty outfit, or perhaps a lone, pastel-colored VW bug buzzing along the motorway come to mind. The massive crowds stifling the site that TikTok described as a "secret treasure" or your QR-enabled boarding pass, sending a photo to your Airbnb host to ensure you put the keys back in the mailbox, or the QR code on your flight pass are probably not things you consider.

No matter how hard you try to travel "off the beaten path," today's cheap flights and low-cost lodging have made it possible for the masses to do so. As a result, travel can occasionally feel congested. Everyone wants an original experience, therefore in response to this difficulty, a new trend that takes a detour through the early 20th century has evolved.

 

 

When Was the Traveling Renaissance?
Google searches for "Golden Age travel" have increased by almost 250 percent in the past year, bringing up pictures of hand-painted travel posters and ancient black-and-white photos of roomy aeroplane cabins full of well-dressed travellers. Although the exact start and end dates of the Golden Age are unknown, it is generally agreed that it spanned from the 1880s to the 1950s. This chronology corresponds to some of the most well-liked movies that depict this romanticised era. Who can forget the glitz of the first-class dining room on the Titanic or the staterooms with wood trim on the Orient Express, despite the dreadful endings?
Even when you're eating reheated chicken parm in an 18-inch-wide economy seat while watching these sights on your in-seat screen, it's difficult not to feel nostalgic for a time period you've never lived through.

You may have observed that Golden Age travel is about a very exclusive form of luxury, which may be the underlying draw of this travel trend, if the golden suites and dining cars haven't already given it away. The velvet-covered scenery or the protagonists' enigmatic wealth, which allows them to move from palazzo to palazzo with seemingly limitless resources, provide a lot of the texture in historical fiction movies and books set around this time.

The unavoidable sense that something wonderful is going to happen, though, seems to permeate every scene of these Golden Age epics and is still included for free with every journey that is scheduled.

 

Holland America Cruise ship on the open sea

 

Taking a Trip Through Time
There are more possibilities available than you may imagine if you're want to travel in the style of a more affluent past. This is because modern travel agencies have caught on to the trend. For instance, Holland America Line will resume its well-known transatlantic route in 2023 to mark the company's 150th anniversary.

According to Kacy Cole, vice president of marketing and e-commerce of Holland America Line, "The Golden Age may have passed, but you can sense its influence in many things we do on board today. "Holland America Line quickly distinguished itself as one of the only cruise lines to offer three hot meals per day, giving staff a chance to clean the guests' staterooms, and setting the highest standards of cleanliness across the industry when it started bringing immigrants from Europe to America in the late 1800s.

The 13-day itinerary has Golden-Age treats in store after the company's inaugural voyage from New York to Rotterdam, including dining experiences based on classic dishes and an especially exciting "Throwback Happy Hour" where the cost per drink will be almost the same as it did a century ago—just 75 cents a glass.

The S.S. Sphinx, a luxurious ship planned to travel up and down the Nile, was just introduced by Uniworld Boutique River Cruises, another cruise operator creating an experience for the nostalgic tourist. However, the true Golden Age style can be found on board, where suites are lavishly decorated with works by local artists and furnished with the finer things in life, such as Egyptian cotton and green marble. The 12-day itinerary provides plenty of time off the ship to explore both contemporary and ancient Egypt.

 

Suite in Venice-Simpleon-Orient Express

 

Honoring Legends
Keep an eye on the Accor Orient Express, whose 17 original train coaches are being renovated and will be open to passengers in 2024, if "embodying a character from an Agatha Christie novel" is on your travel vision board. If you don't want to wait that long, you can spend the night on the Venice-Simplon-Orient Express, which is operated by Belmond and features two Art Deco dining cars that have been beautifully renovated. We might anticipate finding and restoring a few more carriages as people seek out the luxury of the past, especially because some businesses use the phrase "Orient Express" in their marketing materials.

Maybe Jack Kerouac would describe your travels better than Jack Dawson would. If so, Contiki's 60th anniversary Big Original tour could be able to lure you in. The adventure, a 60-day tour of 19 nations, will pay homage to Contiki's very first trip, which transported tourists around Europe in a 12-seat minibus in the summer of 1962. The 60-day route will begin in April if there is sufficient interest, taking travellers to 33 cities across 19 countries and two continents.

The Travel Spirit Now and Then
At first glance, exclusivity may appear like the obvious antithesis of mass tourism. However, everybody who has taken a journey that has changed their life will tell you that spontaneity produced the moments that made them feel the most alive. The only things you need to make your journey feel really timeless are your sense of adventure, an open mind, and perhaps the courage to strike up a conversation with that enigmatic stranger, whether you find yourself on the $10 night bus instead of the plush sleeping coach of the new Orient Express.

 

 


2022-12-23  Tatiana Travis