I have never been more grateful for a satnav in my life, nor more tempted to throw one into the Adriatic. The journey from Split Airport to our Trogir Kastel Stari apartment was meant to take twenty minutes, yet somehow I managed to turn it into a forty-five-minute tour of every back lane, dead end, and suspiciously narrow passage in Central Dalmatia. The comedy peak arrived when I confidently reversed into what I thought was a parking space, only to discover it was someone's private courtyard, complete with an elderly gentleman in a string vest who watched me with the weary patience of a man who had seen this exact scene many times before. He waved me off with a chuckle and what I can only assume was a locally appropriate insult about British drivers.

By the time we actually found the property, I was ready to eat my own steering wheel. But then I opened the door to our apartment and the whole mood shifted. The place had that lovely lived-in feel you do not always get with holiday lets, plus a kitchen that immediately made me want to cook something ambitious and probably ill-advised. The balcony looked out towards the coast, and somewhere in the distance I could smell someone grilling fish with far more competence than I would ever manage.

The first evening, we did the sensible thing and walked the ten minutes into Kastel Stari proper, abandoning any pretence of self-catering. We found a konoba down near the water, one of those family-run places with plastic tablecloths and absolutely no menu in English, which is always the best sign. I ordered the brudet because I had read about it in a guidebook, and my partner went for the grilled sardines. The fish arrived whole, eyeballs intact, staring at me with what felt like personal judgment. I am not ashamed to say I needed two glasses of local Plavac Mali to work up the courage. The wine was excellent, the fish was extraordinary, and by the end I was picking bones from my teeth like a seasoned local, or at least like a British person pretending very hard.

The next morning I woke with culinary confidence that was entirely unearned. The local market in Trogir's old town was my undoing. I bought tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, which confused me after years of supermarket disappointment. I bought prsut that the vendor sliced so thin you could read through it. I bought a hunk of Pag cheese that cost more than I care to admit, and some octopus that I absolutely did not know how to prepare. The fishmonger explained something very helpful in rapid Croatian, gestured at my bag, and laughed. I laughed too, having understood perhaps one word in ten.

Back at the apartment, my attempt at a Dalmatian peka-style dish in a standard electric oven was, charitably, a learning experience. The potatoes were acceptable. The octopus had the texture of a rubber bath toy. We ate it on the balcony with more of that excellent wine and admitted defeat around nine o'clock, wandering down to a nearby pizzeria where the owner took pity on us and brought out complimentary rakija that stripped several layers from my throat and possibly my soul.

By day three I had developed a healthier relationship with local food, by which I mean I stopped pretending I could cook it and started appreciating those who actually could. We found a tiny place near the marina that did grilled calamari so fresh they practically introduced themselves, and another konoba where the owner's grandmother made her own grappa in a shed out back. I tried to buy a bottle. She looked at me, looked at the bottle, and named a price that suggested she either valued it enormously or simply did not want to sell it to someone who had reversed into her neighbour's courtyard earlier in the week. Word gets around in Kastel Stari.

The apartment's kitchen did eventually see some success. Simple things, mainly. Breakfasts of that magnificent bread from the bakery near the church, with olive oil so green and peppery it made my eyes water. Evening aperitifs of cheese and prsut on the balcony, watching the boats come in and pretending we lived there permanently, which I absolutely would if employment and practical reality allowed.

Our final night, we returned to that first konoba. The owner recognised us, which felt like genuine achievement, and recommended the pasticada without us asking. It arrived after a long wait, which I now know means it was cooked properly, not microwaved from frozen. The beef was dark and sweet and complex, the gnocchi underneath soaked in sauce that I mopped up with bread in a way that would have embarrassed me at home but felt completely appropriate there.

Walking back to the apartment, slightly wobbly on local wine and rakija, I realised something. I had come to Croatia planning to cook my way through the holiday, to prove something to myself about competence and independence. Instead, I had spent a week being fed by people who had spent generations perfecting what they do, and I had been enormously happier for it. There is a particular humility in travelling, I think, in accepting that you are not the expert, that the person slicing prsut or tending a fish grill knows something you cannot learn from a cookbook.

We left the next morning. I did not reverse into anyone's courtyard, which felt like personal growth. In the boot, wrapped carefully in my partner's jumpers, was a bottle of that grandmother's grappa, purchased at the price she named with the expression of someone who knew exactly what she was doing. I have not opened it yet. Some things, I have learned, are worth waiting for until you know what you are doing. Or at least until you have stopped reversing into strangers' property.