For many years the gleaming carriages of the Orient-Express train, the Eastern & Oriental, have taken travelers in grand style from Singapore to Bangkok.       Photo by Gene Korte.

Many regard riding the rails on fabled trains as one of the world’s great travel experiences. They hark back to a golden age when every moment of a journey was to be savored and enjoyed. They’re located on most continents and offer a level of service, posh surroundings and all-inclusive fine dining that you will not find on any commercial airline flight today, never mind on a road trip where you have to do all the driving. And in this economy there are bargains to be had when booking passage on luxury trains that include reduced prices, extended stays and additional stops.

Among these one-of-a-kind trains are those operated by Orient-Express. Some of their collection includes the Hiram Bingham in South America that travels from Cusco to Machu Picchu in Peru, the Venice Simplon Orient-Express in Europe and the Eastern & Oriental Express in Southeast Asia. They all offer exclusive china and crystal, white linen and handsome rail cars. And as you gaze out the window, each train creates the magic of a bygone day, http://www.orient-express.com.

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For more information about train travel in general, visit The Society of International Railway Travelers, http://www.irtsociety.com.

Hope Korte stands at the Stone Hut overlooking the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, one of the most visited sites in South America. Photo by Gene Korte.

Back when our granddaughter, Hope, was 13 we traveled with her to Peru. It was Hope’s first international trip and also her first time traveling alone with us. We found seeing Peru, especially through her eyes, was a great way to get better acquainted and also a wonderful opportunity to introduce her to South America.

Hope wanted to see Machu Picchu, the Inca site built in the 1400’s. To get there we flew to Lima, the capital of Peru and the gateway city for most travelers from the US. It’s about eight hours nonstop from New York and in the same time zone half the year. Planning our trip was easy with Peru Experiences, a division of Orient-Express. They specialize in private or family travel and offer one-stop shopping for everything we wanted to see and do.

Gene and I had traveled in Peru several years earlier with a group tour, but this time we saw more of the local people and the countryside and enjoyed a wider range of Peruvian cuisine. We also saw remnants of and heard more about the heritage of the powerful Inca warriors who ruled this part of the world for 300 years before the Spanish arrived in the 1530s.

EATING LIKE AN INCA

The Inca rulers didn’t just eat lunch. They feasted at their midday meal. We did, too, at our barbecue at the Libertador Valle Sagrado Lodge in the Sacred Valley outside Cusco. After a giant salad of fresh greens, we were each given a platter of vegetables cooked in a pachamanca, an underground oven. One of the delights was an eight-inch-long bean pod. When our guide, Miguel, told us the big, oval-shaped beans inside were lima beans, Hope said, “I get it — lima like the city in Peru.”

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