I have never been so relieved to see a man in flip-flops holding a plum in each hand as I was when we finally found our Split Kastel Stafilic holiday let. The journey from Split Airport had been straightforward enough until I decided, with the confidence of someone who had watched one too many travel vlogs, that I could navigate the last two miles using "local knowledge" rather than the directions our host had sent. This local knowledge consisted entirely of a hunch that "it must be just past that petrol station" repeated four times until my partner threatened to feed me to the nearest stray cat.

We arrived forty minutes late, sweaty, and arguing about whether the olive grove we had circled twice was the same olive grove or a different one. Our host, Dinko, did not seem remotely bothered. He simply held out his plums in what I initially interpreted as a strange welcome gesture, then popped one into his own mouth and offered us the other with a shrug. "You look like you need fruit," he said, which was not the greeting I had rehearsed in my head but was probably more accurate.

The property itself sat in Kastel Stafilic, one of those seven Kastela towns strung along the coast like beads on a necklace that someone has tangled slightly. Dinko walked us through with the pace of a man who had done this ten thousand times but still found something amusing in each new arrival's reaction. The terrace, he explained, was where his grandmother had dried figs. The figs were long gone but the drying racks remained, and he encouraged us to use them for our swimming costumes with the same gravity he applied to showing us the boiler.

That first evening we walked down to the seafront promenade, still disorientated from travel and plum sugar. Within five minutes a man sitting outside a konoba called out to ask if we were the English who had got lost by the olive grove. News travels fast in Kastel Stafilic, or perhaps Dinko had broadcast our arrival. We admitted our shame and he insisted we sit down, introducing himself as Branko and explaining that he had retired from the shipyards and now spent his days "supervising" the waterfront. His supervision appeared to consist of drinking loza with anyone who would join him and arguing with his brother about football across the table without either of them actually disagreeing.

Branko's brother, we learned, was called Branko too. "This is normal here," the first Branko said, as if that explained everything. The second Branko arrived ten minutes later, identical cap, identical glass, and they immediately began their football argument where they had left off, which appeared to be mid-sentence from 1987.

The woman running the konoba, Marija, brought us prsut and cheese without us ordering and told us we looked hungry. I started to explain about the plums but she waved her hand. "Dinko gives everyone plums," she said. "Last week it was a German couple, they looked confused too." She said this with satisfaction, as if confusion was the appropriate state for tourists.

Walking back that night, still full of cured meat and local wine, I found myself oddly moved by the whole encounter. There is something about arriving somewhere and immediately becoming a minor character in other people's long-running stories. Branko and Branko would forget us by morning but we would remember them, and Dinko's plums, and Marija's certainty about our hunger. The holiday had not started as planned, but plans, I was beginning to understand, were not really the point of Kastel Stafilic.