I have never been brilliant with directions, and my arrival at the Split Podstrana proved this beyond all doubt. We had flown into Split Airport, collected our hire car with the sort of overconfidence that only comes from having watched one YouTube video about Croatian driving, and set off towards Podstrana with the sunroof open and my partner navigating via a phone that kept losing signal every time we passed an olive grove.

The mishap, when it came, was spectacularly stupid. I had written the property code CSD027 on a scrap of paper, which I then confidently used to punch into the sat nav. What I had actually written, in my airport-coffee haze, was CSD027 followed by a smudged postcode that belonged to a completely different village somewhere near Zagreb. We spent forty-five minutes winding up increasingly narrow roads, past stone houses where elderly gentlemen sat watching our little Renault with the amused patience of people who have seen this exact scene a thousand times before. The road turned to gravel, then to something that might generously be called a track, and finally to a dead end where a very friendly dog informed us, in no uncertain terms, that we were not welcome.

My partner, who possesses the patience of a saint but the eyebrow-raise of a sceptical headmistress, suggested we check the booking confirmation. I produced my phone with the theatrical flourish of someone who knew they were about to be vindicated. I was not vindicated. The actual Podstrana, it turned out, was a straightforward fifteen-minute coastal drive from the airport, flat and obvious and clearly signposted. We had been heading inland towards the mountains, chasing a ghost postcode into the Croatian hinterland like characters from a particularly low-budget farce.

By the time we reached the proper address, I had developed what I can only describe as arrival fatigue, that peculiar condition where the journey has become so ridiculous that you no longer trust reality itself. The property sat on a gentle slope above the main coastal road, a modern villa with clean lines and terracotta roof tiles that caught the late afternoon light. I remember standing in the driveway, still slightly sweaty from our unintended detour, and feeling the sort of relief that makes you laugh at absolutely nothing.

The key collection was mercifully simple, handled through a lockbox with a code that I triple-checked before entering. The door opened onto cool tile floors and that particular Mediterranean smell of lavender and distant sea salt. I made straight for the terrace, partly because I needed to sit down and partly because I needed to verify that the Adriatic was actually there, that we had arrived somewhere real and not invented by my exhausted brain. It was there, blue and implausible, stretching towards islands I could not name.

My first proper look around revealed the sort of practical luxury that makes self-catering genuinely appealing. The kitchen was properly equipped, not the usual holiday-home selection of one blunt knife and a saucepan with no handle. The living space opened directly onto that terrace, where a covered dining area promised evenings with grilled fish and local wine. I found myself already forgiving the villa for my own stupidity in getting to it, which is perhaps unfair but very human.

The pool, when I finally located it on the lower terrace, was smaller than the photographs suggested but somehow more charming for it, tucked among rosemary bushes with a view down to the water. I sat on the edge with my feet in, still wearing the socks I had not removed since the airport, and watched the light change over the islands. My partner brought me a beer from the fridge, which I accepted with the grace of a man who knows he has been an idiot but is too tired to properly apologise.

That first evening, we walked down to the nearest stretch of Podstrana's pebble beach, a ten-minute stroll that my legs appreciated after all that unnecessary driving. The sea was warmer than expected, the sort of gentle temperature that makes you stay in longer than planned. We ate at a konoba where the owner recommended grilled sardines with the authority of someone who had caught them that morning, and I ate them with my fingers like a proper tourist, watching the lights of Split flicker across the bay.

I went to bed that night with the sliding door open to the terrace, the sound of crickets and distant waves, and the certain knowledge that I would check every address twice for the remainder of the holiday. Some lessons, it seems, require forty-five minutes of gravel roads and one very judgemental dog to properly sink in.