The towering brunette beauty in shiny spike heels and her short, gray-haired companion waited in line at dusk in the French capital one recent Friday as tourists in jeans and hoodies stared in envy.
For far less than the price of a rail ticket to Istanbul, the eye-catching couple was about to step back in time by sampling lobster, morels and rosewater-lokum ice cream aboard a restored Orient Express dining car in the courtyard of the Institute of the Arab World in Paris's Fifth Arrondissement.
The pop-up restaurant, directed by the Michelin-starred Yannick Alléno is just one element of a clever new exhibition that runs through August on how the fabled train opened regions east of Europe to more than just the most intrepid travelers.
Visitors to ''Once Upon a Time the Orient Express'' first encounter a hulking black locomotive on the museum grounds, and then stroll through authentic carriages — a lounge, a sleeper and a bar car — to imagine how it felt as the Art Deco icon trundled across border after border, bringing the rich and famous to explore what they viewed as exotic cultures.
Recordings of muffled conversations, and even sneezes and snores, echo overhead as you pass through the cars, designed to shudder as if still on the rails.
Walls of the lounge are decorated with stylized bas relief nudes of René Lalique crystal. On one table sits a manual Remington typewriter next to a copy of ''Stamboul Train,'' Graham Greene's tale of romance, death and espionage as the train hurtled toward Constantinople.
Another table features Josephine Baker playbills, a string of pearls, kid leather gloves, a Bakelite cigarette holder and champagne flutes. On yet another, a red fez and a crystal hookah represent the French author and explorer Pierre Loti.
Sleeper cars pay homage to fictional characters like James Bond and celebrated passengers like Mata Hari.
In the Train Bleu bar car, all mahogany and leather, a lamp with a delicately fluted shade illuminates a table set with a brandy decanter and copies of Agatha Christie's ''Murder on the Orient Express'' in French, Turkish and Hungarian.
Claude Mollard, a longtime arts adviser known for his role in establishing the Georges Pompidou Center, curated the exhibition in a $3.5 million collaboration with the French National Railway Company, known by its French acronym SNCF, which has owned the Orient Express brand name since 1977.
Mr. Mollard continues the exhibition inside the museum, detailing the train's ties to Turkey and the Arab world with an installation of newsreels, oil paintings, travel posters and dinnerware, some displayed in cases modeled on supersize travel trunks.
With the detail and humor that has been injected into the exhibition, it's clear that the curator understood what Proust meant by ''the most intoxicating of romance novels, the railway timetable.''
And for those who can't quite part with 120 euros, or $165, for four courses (160 euros with wine) to dine in Mr. Alléno's Ephemeral Orient Express Restaurant, the exhibition ends with an Arabic-style coffee shop.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
In Transit Blog: Orient Express, the Exhibition
Dengan url
http://travelwisatawan.blogspot.com/2014/05/in-transit-blog-orient-express.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
In Transit Blog: Orient Express, the Exhibition
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
In Transit Blog: Orient Express, the Exhibition
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar