The Art Of… Overdelivering

Often the best holiday experiences happen when we have low expectations.

- Anna Hart

My 33-year-old friend Roxy recently had a romance with a 23-year-old man, who she calmly told: “The key to happiness in life, Louis, is low expectations.” I am not quite such a stone-cold fox but, after the year we’ve had, I can see the wisdom in keeping dreams simple… so that potentially, our expectations can be surpassed. I’d never suggest we settle for the mediocre, but many of my most memorable travel experiences have occurred when I showed up with low or no expectations. So, I’m dedicating this column to the simple, unsung things that regularly overdeliver on their promise.

I’ll start with breakfast. The most humble meal of the day, it is frequently my favourite when I travel. Breakfast doesn’t have the same glamour attached to it as dinner, but it also doesn’t have the same price tag, or pressure. If dinner is a flop, it’s a crisis; if breakfast is so-so, well, who cares? It was just breakfast. There are another two meals left in the day, and even the most lacklustre hotel breakfast is probably better than the breakfasts most of us ate throughout childhood, when people expected even less of the meal. By occupying the most mundane mealtime of the day, breakfast is liberated from the pressures that besiege dinner. This freedom means that sometimes, breakfast is the meal that shines.