I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to pay for petrol at Split Airport with the loyalty card from my local Tesco Express. The attendant looked at me with the sort of pity usually reserved for people who bring wellies to the beach, and I shuffled back to the hire car wondering how I'd managed three decades without learning a single useful Croatian phrase beyond "pivo," which I suppose says rather a lot about my priorities.

The drive down to Omis Dugi Rat took about forty minutes, winding along the coastal road with the Adriatic winking at me through the pines. I'd been warned about Croatian drivers treating speed limits as gentle suggestions, but nothing prepares you for the reality of a Fiat Panda overtaking you on a blind bend while you're still trying to work out whether the sat nav is saying "turn left" or just having a small electronic breakdown. I arrived at the property with slightly white knuckles and a powerful thirst, which turned out to be excellent preparation for what followed.

The apartment itself was one of those instantly comforting spaces, all terracotta tiles and white walls that somehow stay cool even when the midday sun is doing its best impression of a pizza oven. I dumped my case, opened every window, and stood on the balcony for a good five minutes just breathing in that particular smell of pine and salt and distant grilling fish. Then my stomach rumbled with the subtlety of a departing ferry, and I realised I'd done that classic British thing of arriving somewhere with tremendous culinary intentions and absolutely no actual food.

The local Konzum supermarket became my first port of call, and I use "port" deliberately because navigating the car park required nautical levels of patience. I wandered the aisles in a happy daze, filling my trolley with things I couldn't properly identify, including what I thought was cooking oil but turned out to be some sort of herbal liqueur that would later make an unexpected appearance in a stir-fry. The cheese selection alone nearly brought me to tears, proper Dalmatian paški sir that smells like it has opinions and tastes like it has stories. I bought far too much, which is the only correct amount when on holiday.

That first evening I attempted what I grandly called a "Mediterranean platter," which in practice meant arranging olives, pršut, and bread on a plate while drinking most of a bottle of local Graševina and calling it "preparation." The bread was still warm from the bakery I'd found tucked behind the main road, the sort of place where the woman behind the counter cuts slices with a knife that has clearly been in service since the Yugoslav era. I ate on the balcony watching the light change over the water and felt, not for the last time, that particular smugness of having accidentally done something exactly right.

The next morning I discovered the local market, a modest affair near the waterfront that nonetheless contained everything required for happiness: tomatoes that actually tasted of something, figs so ripe they were practically apologising for themselves, and an old man selling wine from plastic bottles with handwritten labels. I bought his recommendation, some sort of red that left purple stains on my teeth for hours, and felt terribly authentic until I realised I had no corkscrew and had to perform emergency surgery with a knife and a lot of misplaced confidence.

By day three I'd established something of a routine. Mornings meant coffee on the balcony with bread from my bakery friend, afternoons meant attempting to cook whatever looked interesting at the market, and evenings meant admitting defeat and walking to one of the local konobas. There's a particular one I won't name because I want to keep it selfishly to myself, down a side street where the tables wobble on the uneven stone and the owner brings you grilled fish he caught himself that morning. The first time I went, I tried to order in my phrasebook Croatian and accidentally asked for "twelve octopuses and a small horse." He brought me the house white and we agreed English was probably safer for everyone.

I did make one genuinely successful meal, a simple pasta with mussels I'd bought from a van by the harbour, cooked with garlic and that mystery liqueur after I'd given up pretending it was oil. It was, against all reasonable expectation, absolutely magnificent. I ate it standing at the kitchen counter in my swimming trunks, slightly sunburned and entirely content, and posted a photograph to social media that got three likes and a comment from my aunt asking if I was eating worms.

The local pubs and bars were equally educational. There's a beach bar near the property where they serve cocktails in plastic cups and play music from approximately 2004, which I found oddly comforting in its terrible reliability. I became briefly notorious for my attempts to explain what a "pint" was, eventually accepting that half-litres are a perfectly reasonable way to live. The barman learned my order, which felt like genuine integration until I realised he probably just remembered the sunburned Englishman who kept trying to pay in euros before remembering Croatia joined the eurozone, then kept trying to pay in kuna anyway out of confused habit.

My final evening, I attempted a grand farewell dinner using every remaining ingredient in the kitchen, a sort of Dalmatian-English fusion that nobody asked for and nobody should repeat. The tomatoes were excellent, the fish was slightly overcooked after I became distracted by a spectacular sunset, and the wine was, by this point, absolutely whatever was left in the fridge. I ate it on the balcony as I'd eaten almost everything, watching the lights come on across the water and wondering why I don't live like this always, before remembering that British supermarkets don't sell figs that apologise for their ripeness and that this is probably important somehow.

I left the next morning with a suitcase full of cheese, a liver that requested a quiet word, and a new appreciation for the particular joy of cooking badly with excellent ingredients in a beautiful place. The Tesco loyalty card is still in my wallet, ready for the next adventure.