I tried the European train that runs from seaside to city – it felt like a first class flight but cost just £40

AFTER tucking into the smoked salmon, pesto and cream cheese brioche hand­ed to me by a smiling attendant, I reclined in my seat while the landscape flashed by.

It might sound like the first-class cabin of an airline, but I’m actually on a Polish train.

5

5

The intercity high-speed trains that run from the pretty port city of Gdansk on the Baltic coast down to the stately southern city of Krakow are the finest way to see Poland.

And a first-class ticket, complete with food, drink and a rolling vista of wonderful views, costs around £40 for the 300-mile journey.

The British equivalent would be taking a train from London to Glasgow. But you’d need to add a zero to the price at peak times.

Gdansk wears its history lightly but respectfully.

This is where World War Two started, when the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein bombed the port of what was then called Danzig.

There’s a huge museum in a slanting building dedicated to the conflict (muzeum1939.pl/en), which takes pains to concentrate on witness testimonies from ordinary Polish citizens who lived through the war.

The sheer size of the tank that sits on a recreated city street puts paid to any Hollywood notions of war being anything other than an ­exercise in terror.

Gdansk’s nightlife is every bit as lively as you would expect from a port city, but the cliché of rough ­sailors’ pubs has long gone. The Mercure Hotel offers knockout cocktails in its chic bar, while I also sampled sublime local vodkas to a DJ soundtrack amid the battered Chesterfield sofas inside Bar Lamus.

The train south to Krakow takes just over five hours and runs right through the centre of the country.

Leaving the Baltic coast, we passed vast fields of racing green, clusters of birch trees, red painted barns and deserted rural stations with flowerbeds outside.

Arrows of sunlight pierced tapering lanes and turned the glossy, ­depthless rivers and streams the colour of pewter.

For a country that has seen so much bloodshed, from a high-speed train, the nation looks ordered, calm and reassuringly familiar — like the landscapes of Lincolnshire or Kent from half a century ago.

As I order a glass of white wine, we run through the teeming cluster of Warsaw, with its mowed parks and jumble of new skyscrapers in the background.

An afternoon nap was inviting, but I was once again transfixed by the landscapes as we rolled further south. Ice-cream-scoop clouds hung above stout houses with roofs the colour of strong tea.

5

5

5

I felt I could sit on this train for ever. But Krakow is the end of the high-speed line, and so I made my way on foot into the Old Town — a pleasing maze of arcades and ­courtyards that meanders past the majestic royal castle and cathedral on Wawel Hill and down to the ­Vistula River.

Dinner came courtesy of Pod Baranem (podbaranem.com), which looks like a Polish granny’s living room but serves delicious plates of local classics such as dumplings stuffed with cottage cheese and roast veal with mushrooms.

Back at the funky, loft-style Mercure Fabryczna hotel, I fell into bed feeling I needed to rethink my definitions of luxury travel.

You don’t need five-star cruise liners or infinite air miles to travel in style.

A Polish train can make you feel pampered in a way that’s unlikely to ever occur on National Rail.