For over twenty years now, we’ve been introducing travelers to the riches of the American past. No destination has been more popular than autumn foliage time in New England and New York’s Hudson Valley. In October, 2023 we will return to this cradle of the American republic, with an entirely new itinerary. Besides a handful of perennial favorites like the Adams sites in Quincy, Massachusetts and Calvin Coolidge’s rustic Plymouth Notch, Vermont – this year commemorating the 100th anniversary of his lamplit inauguration in the simple Coolidge homestead – we’re including three previously unvisited presidential birthplaces; the Revolutionary War battleground on Boston’s famed Bunker Hill; a first time visit to the colonial home of American patriot and Founding Father Paul Revere; a tour of Albany’s sprawling State Capitol building, the most sumptuous seat of government in America; a full day’s sampling of Vermont’s agricultural and environmental history in and around picturesque Woodstock; a picnic on New York City’s Little Island; and a visit to Federal Hall, birthplace of the American presidency.

Adding to the trip’s WOW factor: three remarkable homes and museums associated with as many pioneering artists and collectors…Boston’s Italian palazzo built to house the Old Masters and antiquities assembled by Isabella Stewart Gardner; landscape artist Frederic Church’s Olana, a 250 acre landscaped estate and palatial home overlooking the Hudson River; and The Cloisters, a medieval complex showcasing the priceless tapestries and religious art collected by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

With first-class hotels, meals to match, and the incomparable landscapes of autumnal New England and the Hudson Valley – it’s no exaggeration that this nine-day tour, twenty years in the making, is called The Best of the Best.

No one’s ever said it better than Harry Truman: “The only new thing in the world is the history you don’t know.” Americans have long neglected the history of the Gilded Age, that post-Civil War adolescence when a divided land gradually coalesced around railroads and robber barons, exploding industries and wartime promises tragically deferred, massive immigration and festering inequalities. And, oh yes – some of the most colorful, contentious, and occasionally corrupt, politics and politicians in our history. It’s an incredibly rich pageant, one that will serve as the backdrop for our travel back to the origins of today’s America. Situated in the heart of downtown Columbus, the Renaissance Hotel is our historical base camp for the entire tour. More presidents. Less packing.

Beginning the last week of May, we’ll visit sites associated with eight (mostly Gilded Age) presidents in Ohio and Indiana. Not to mention a host of historically significant women, from Lucy Hayes and Lucretia Garfield, to Florence “the Duchess” Harding, Nellie Taft and Ida McKinley. Such an itinerary allows for more in depth – dare I say, leisurely – exploration of the surprising McKinley era, the boyhood homes of Ulysses Grant and William Howard Taft, and the decidedly immodest post presidential estates of Rutherford and Lucy Hayes, and Indiana’s favorite son Benjamin Harrison. In Marion, Ohio we’ll tour the brand new Harding Presidential Library and Museum, as well as the newly restored Harding home as it appeared on Election Night, 1920. In fact, a majority of the 20 attractions we’ll visit are either themselves new to us, or places completely renovated/reimagined since any earlier travels.