When it comes to nostalgia for places we've never been, our (unearned!) love for the golden age of rail travel surely takes the cake.

In October I took the cake from Singapore to Bangkok aboard the lavish Eastern & Orient Express. I took the formal dinners, and the personal porter, and the dry martinis, and the long, wistful studies of the muggy countryside from the open-air observation car, as piano music trickled out from a nearby window.