Great Expectations

Zeke and Terri at Upper Belvedere Palace, Vienna, Austria (April 2026)

When we purchased our flight to Rome to start our spring trip, we didn’t realize that we were arriving right before Easter. I was more focused on April 5th being my birthday and since Easter is a candy holiday for us, I wasn’t paying attention. Note to self: check school break and cruise ship schedules when planning trips.

Once we started to plan my birthday weekend, we realized our mistake. Flying into Rome was not the best move for us.

We’d considered going to Sicily for the better part of a week, including my birthday, and then learned that Italy celebrates not only Easter, but Easter Monday as well. As we looked into going to Malta and Athens, we learned of the heavy cruise ship schedule and I said hell no!

Why the pressure for the perfect stop after Rome? Because unlike for other people (ahem, Zeke), I like to celebrate and be celebrated on my birthday. This often means that I tend to have unreasonably high expectations for my birthday.

After discarding Sicily, Malta, Athens, and even Berlin (too out of the way) for our post-Rome stop, we decided on Vienna. It really came down to this: what do I love most about traveling? Art museums. Shocking, I know. Austria was supposed to be a country that didn’t celebrate Easter the way Italy did. And, bonus, museums typically closed on Monday were going to be open on Easter Monday. (Note to self: this kind of thing is a clue)

While in Vienna, when we first visited in October 2024, I fell in love with the artist Egon Schiele and had a list of places I wanted to visit and revisit when we returned. Zeke researched and found a special place for dinner. I found a cool looking hotel in the Accor family (The Hoxton) that was perfectly situated for visiting the Belvedere Palace complex, the Upper Belvedere, and easy walking distance to the Kunsthistoriches and Leopold Museums.

What I mistakenly did was set my expectations too high only to have them dashed as you can see in our most recent Vienna video.

Why do I do this to myself? By now, I should know better.

With that being said, my actual birthday was a great day. We started with breakfast at the hotel and then went to the Kunsthistoriches Museum. Last time we were there, we only saw a Rembrandt exhibit. This time, we saw all but one floor. There were quite a few people there since it was Easter Sunday, but the place is huge and the people were pretty well spread out.

The weather was fantastic. After the Kunsthistoriches, we walked over to MuseumQuartier, had lunch outside overlooking the MuseumQuartier plaza which is great for people watching. I was so excited to visit the Leopold to see the Egon Schiele artwork and I wasn’t disappointed. It was just as amazing and I walked through twice while Zeke hung out in a lovely sitting area. I took my time because it was my birthday and I could. We ended the day with dinner at a French-Viennese place and it was a really great day.

The next day was harder. The Upper Belvedere was jam-packed with people. Not just people, but rude people. People walked in front of me as I was looking at a piece of art as if I wasn’t there. They stopped in the middle of stairwells, especially at the top making it impossible to move. I wanted to scream. We included my rant in the video. I was having a terrible day.

I’d been so excited to see the Upper Belvedere because of the Gustav Klimt collection. I really wanted to see The Kiss in person. Because of the crowd of rude people, I didn’t appreciate the art. And wow! Klimt’s flower work is incredible.

Zeke rarely has actual expectations. He shows up curious. He wonders what a place will be like, how an experience will unfold, and what he might discover. As a result, he doesn't end up disappointed as often as I do.

I, on the other hand, am a planner. I research. I create itineraries. I imagine how things will go. Most of the time that serves me well. Sometimes, though, I cross an invisible line between planning and scripting. I build a version of the experience in my head and then become frustrated when reality refuses to follow the script.

The funny thing is that my birthday itself was wonderful. The Kunsthistorisches Museum was fantastic. The Leopold Museum was every bit as good as I remembered. The weather was beautiful. Dinner was lovely. By every measure, it was a great day.

The next day, however, was exactly the opposite. The Upper Belvedere was overcrowded, people were rude, and I left far more frustrated than inspired.

Looking back, Vienna wasn't really the problem. The crowds were real. The frustration was real. But so was the gap between what I expected the weekend to be and what it actually was. That was Vienna's lesson for me.

Not every museum visit will be magical. Not every birthday stop will be perfect. Not every carefully researched plan will unfold exactly as imagined. The more tightly I hold onto a particular outcome, the more likely I am to miss what's actually happening around me.

There's no right way to travel, and I'm not going to stop planning. But I do think that if I can hold my plans a little more loosely and show up a little more curious, I'll enjoy the journey more.

Fortunately, this is something that I realized in Budapest after we baked and cold-plunged our bodies and souls at the Széchenyi Thermal Bath and I threw our itinerary out the window. The lesson was reinforced in Marseille when we were stuck for 30 minutes at the passport check window trying to leave France for Tunisia and the computer system went down. I decided to lean into the chaos which became my mantra for the rest of the trip.

Having high expectations versus choosing chaos, I should probably find a middle ground. But at this point we know moderation isn't in my vocabulary.

So, onward!