I have never been brilliant with directions, which is why my other half insisted on doing the driving from Split Airport to our holiday let in Baska Voda. I was in charge of navigation, armed with a phone that had roughly eleven percent battery and a printed map that looked like it had survived a washing machine cycle. Somewhere between Omis and the Makarska Riviera, we missed the turn for the coastal road and found ourselves winding up a mountain track that grew narrower with every bend. The sat nav kept cheerfully announcing we had reached our destination while goats stared at us with what I can only describe as professional disappointment.

By the time we found the proper road again, my phone had died, the printed map had turned to papier-mache in my sweaty palms, and my partner was making that particular breathing noise that means they are being extremely patient. We rolled into Baska Voda proper just as the afternoon sun was doing its most dazzling work, all terracotta roofs and that impossible blue of the Adriatic. I had imagined sweeping up to our apartment with some dignity, perhaps looking slightly tanned and relaxed already. Instead we arrived looking like we had been dragged through a hedge backwards, which in fairness was almost literally true given the vegetation on that mountain track.

The property itself sat on a gentle slope above the main strip, a modern block with balconies that caught the evening light. I had packed the keys in my hand luggage for safekeeping, a decision that felt very organised at Gatwick. Less so when I realised my hand luggage was buried under two suitcases, a beach bag, three packets of emergency biscuits, and the coat I insisted we needed in thirty-degree heat. My other half sat on the kerb with the expression of someone who has seen this film before and did not enjoy the first viewing.

The apartment, when we finally breached its defences, smelled of fresh linen and something faintly citrus, which I choose to believe was intentional rather than a side effect of cleaning products. The balcony doors opened with that satisfying whoosh of Mediterranean air, and suddenly the chaos of the journey felt rather distant. Below us, Baska Voda stretched along its bay, the promenade already filling with evening strollers. Someone was grilling fish somewhere close by, that unmistakable scent of charcoal and seafood drifting up to remind us we had not eaten since a soggy airport sandwich at dawn.

I stood there in my creased travelling clothes, still clutching the dead phone and the ruined map, and felt that particular shift that happens on holiday. The morning had been British drizzle and queueing. Now there was this light, this smell, this sense of having arrived somewhere that operates on entirely different rules. My partner appeared beside me with two glasses of the local white wine, purchased from a shop we had passed three times while lost. We clinked glasses somewhat ironically, given my navigational performance, and watched a cruise ship sliding past the islands offshore.

The mishaps were not quite finished. I managed to trap my finger in the balcony door within the hour, and discovered that Croatian shower controls require a degree I do not possess. But sitting there as the light turned golden and the promenade lights began flickering on, I felt properly present in a way that airport stress rarely allows. Sometimes the messiest arrivals make the best stories, or at least that is what I told myself while rubbing my bruised finger and accepting another glass of wine.