Greetings!

Jean and I love taking our friends on big trips to fresh places. Next summer we’ll be doing the same. These three holidays share the hallmark of all Bob & Jean trips: we never just do one thing.

This past summer, we spent a week in a villa in Umbria and took in Angela Hewitt’s Trasimeno Music Festival; we went to the High Arctic and saw hundreds of Beluga whales calving; and we took in a literary festival in Greece as part of a biking and hiking trip.

So we want to give you advance notice of the three adventures we’re leading next year and invite you to join us on one or two or all of them.

Here they are. We are confident they’ll fill up quickly, as they did last year and before. So please hit Reply and let me know if you’re interested. Better yet, sign up for one or more of them.

Mark Twain once said "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." 

We say “If you think adventure is risky, try routine; it’s lethal.”

a. July 27 - August 4, 2026 - Classical Music and Opera in Finland

Enjoy best seats at two performances of the Savonlinna Opera Festival and two concerts at the Mikkeli Music Festival, plus smaller private concerts, opera buffa dinners, tours of Finland's splendid architecture, plus expert talks and the usual head-snapping surprises.

Jean and I have been to Savonlinna and Mikkeli before, and the music there is some of the best you'll hear in Europe. For us, Finland is the great undiscovered Nordic nation and we've put this adventure together with Exeter International, one of Europe's top luxury tour operators. We'll also be there when the sun stays out later than we ever will.

The attached PDF contains all the information you need, including the cost and how to reserve your spot through Exeter. Our group will be between 16 and 24 people, and of course we're planning for 24.

b. August 30 - September 3, 2026 – Heli-hiking and the future of Canada

Some of our most visionary citizens will discuss the huge challenges and opportunities facing our country from four different perspectives: 

Politics with Steve Paikin; healthcare with Dr. Danielle Martin; technology and AI with Ron Deibert; and Indigenous relations with Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux.

They won’t do this just from a podium, but from a mountain top. Or rather, from Bobbie Burns Lodge, which is nestled in the Purcell Mountains of the BC interior, one of the most stunning ranges on earth.

Nor will they just be talking and you listening. They’ll be heli-hiking with 32 of us over four luxurious days in the gorgeous peaks that embrace the Lodge.

These landscapes are not only achingly beautiful; they’re inaccessible except by helicopter.

There are no trails and no other people, except for our mountain guides. And of course no skill or endurance is needed. If you can walk around your kitchen, you can helihike. You can be young or old. You can have creaking hips or replacement knees. Or you can be an ultra-marathoner. It doesn’t matter. All you need is a sense of intellectual adventure.

Each morning we fly out to a mountaintop or mountain meadow, and late each afternoon, everyone returns to the Lodge where we can enjoy a hot tub, a massage, or a snooze. Before dinner each night one of our speakers unpacks a subject they know only too well.

Needless to say, in this kind of environment, you’re not only going to learn from what the speakers have to say, but from who they are.

So if you’re looking to expand your mind, understand more of this very complex land we call home, and exercise your sense of wonder, click this link to register and join us at The Canada Summit.

c. September 26 - October 6, 2026. The Kardamyli Literary Festival, plus ancient Macedonia.

For the past four years, Jean and I have taken friends to the Peleponnese in western Greece, to the tiny fishing village of Kardamyli to enjoy four days of a literary festival with the best of Britain’s public intellectuals, from Simon Schama and Rory Stewart, to Ben MacIntyre, Michaela Wrong, Lyse Doucet and Antony Gormley. 

The Festival is an exquisite main course of a 10-day feast that includes bicycling and hiking, and a pre-trip to Thessaloniki, with a day at the fabulous new Museum of the Royal Tombs of Aigai in Vergina.

Here is next year’s trip for 18 of us. Please contact me at bob@ramsayinc.com if you’re interested in joining us.

Onward.

Bob Ramsay

RamsayTravels