LIFESTYLE

The Orient Express has this uncanny ability to conjure up images of luxury, decadence, adventure, mystic, unabashed hedonism and, even something as gruesome as murder.

If not for the worldwide travel restrictions still causing borders to be shut around the world, the name would have also prompted an impulsive booking of one of Belmond’s luxury train journeys — particularly the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. Life is simply beautiful with savouring oysters and indulging champagne at all hours in the storied Art Deco carriages of the world’s most opulent train from the Golden Age.

However, the brutal reality is that worldwide travel is not going to resume anytime soon. Hence, the next best thing is a pop-up attraction coming to you. Thanks to the Arab World Institute, the Orient Express will arrive in Singapore this December 2020 at the West Lawn of Gardens at the Bay. Titled Once Upon a Time on the Orient Express, the six-month-long exhibition presents “a fairytale universe related to travel, culture and gastronomy”.

Two original 1930 train carriages and a 158-year-old locomotive have been painstakingly restored to their former glory and will be shipped from France, housing around 300 objects and documents (posters, menus, crockery, trunks, and more) that retraces the centuries-old legacy of the famous train. Visitors will also discover the routes and landscapes that nobles, explorers and diplomats had travelled on through documentaries, newsreels and film clips. Better yet, immerse yourself in the romance of a bygone era dining in the replica restaurant car or play Hercule Poirot and solve a detective case in the escape room a la Murder on The Orient Express. Time travel is impossible, you say? Not for the Oriental Express.

Once Upon a Time on the Orient Express will take place from December 12, 2020 to June 13, 2021. Tickets will be available for sale from 2 October 2020 on SISTIC.