I have never been very good at reading the small print, and this particular talent let me down spectacularly the moment we arrived in Split. The flight from Manchester had been surprisingly civilised, even if the chap in front of me spent three hours perfecting the art of reclining his seat directly into my kneecaps. We collected our hire car, a cheerful little Fiat that wheezed its way through the Croatian countryside, and followed the sat nav towards what I had blithely assumed was a straightforward hotel in the city centre.

The first clue that something was amiss came when the roads narrowed to the width of a generous footpath and began climbing steeply into the Marjan hill area. My partner, who had been navigating with the confidence of someone who had briefly glanced at Google Maps two weeks prior, kept insisting we were nearly there. The Fiat disagreed, emitting a concerning grinding noise every time the incline exceeded fifteen degrees. We passed increasingly residential streets, then olive groves, then what appeared to be someone's very determined vineyard clinging to a rocky slope.

"This can't be right," I announced, as we squeezed past a goat that looked deeply unimpressed with our driving.

It was, I discovered upon finally locating the property and frantically scrolling through my booking confirmation, entirely right. I had somehow missed that our accommodation was a self-catering apartment, not a hotel, and that it sat perched on the wooded slopes of Marjan rather than in the bustling heart of Diocletian's Palace. The goat had been a local resident. The grinding noise was apparently just the Fiat's personality.

The owner, a patient woman named Katarina who had clearly dealt with my type before, met us at the gate with a warm smile and a set of keys. She led us up exterior stone steps that wound between Mediterranean pines, and I became increasingly aware that my wheeled suitcase was designed for polished airport concourses, not ancient Dalmatian stonework. At one point I attempted to carry it, which lasted approximately four steps before my arm threatened to detach. I settled for a sort of undignified dragging motion that I told myself looked adventurous rather than desperate.

Then we stepped inside, and the chaos of the journey fell away rather abruptly.

The apartment opened onto a covered terrace with wooden furniture and a view that made me temporarily forget my burning forearm. Through the pines, the Adriatic stretched out in that particular shade of blue that seems almost aggressive in its beauty, and the old town of Split sat nestled along the coastline with the palace walls clearly visible. Katarina explained that the walk down to the Riva promenade took about fifteen minutes through the park, or slightly longer if one stopped to appreciate the viewpoints, which I already knew I would.

The interior was simple and genuinely charming, not in the curated way of boutique hotels but in the manner of somewhere actually lived in and cared for. Terracotta tiles underfoot, wooden shutters that actually functioned, a kitchen where I immediately spotted the coffee maker and felt a profound relief. The bedroom overlooked greenery rather than the sea, but the trade-off meant waking to birdsong rather than early-morning delivery lorries.

I stood on that terrace with a cold beer from the corner shop we had passed, watching the ferry from the islands make its slow approach to the port, and reflected on my chronic inability to read booking details. The mishap had given us something better than my imagined city-centre hotel: a pocket of calm above the bustle, with the scent of pine and the sea breeze competing for attention. Sometimes being slightly incompetent works out rather well.