I have never been brilliant with directions, and my family will happily confirm this. So when our sat nav decided to have a small meltdown somewhere between Split Airport and Trogir, I was not entirely surprised. What did surprise me was my husband's confidence that "the marina is definitely this way" as we trundled down a road that grew progressively narrower, bumpier, and more suspiciously agricultural. We ended up in someone's olive grove. A very nice someone, as it happened, who emerged from his stone house with a cup of coffee still in hand and directed us back toward civilisation with the weary patience of a man who has redirected many lost Britons in his time.

We finally found Trogir Marina proper, and I will admit that my first thought was relief rather than romance. The relief did not last long, because the place is genuinely lovely. The apartment itself was one of those modern Croatian numbers built with actual boat owners in mind, all clean lines and clever storage and a balcony that looked directly over the water. Our two children shot past me the moment I opened the door, fighting over who would claim which bedroom and who had spotted a fish first from the window. Standard holiday chaos, in other words.

I stood on that balcony with a cup of tea that I had made using the sort of temperamental kettle that every self-catering property seems to possess, and I watched the boats bobbing in their moorings. Little sailing yachts, a few larger motor cruisers, the occasional fishing boat puttering back with its morning catch. The water in that part of Central Dalmatia has this particular quality, a deep blue-green that photographs never quite capture properly. I took several anyway, naturally. They all came out slightly wrong, which felt fitting somehow.

The first evening set the tone for what I suspect most families experience in these parts. We wandered the ten minutes or so into Trogir's old town, which is one of those UNESCO-listed mazes of medieval streets that Croatia does so well. The children were hungry and therefore borderline feral. My husband and I were still slightly tense from the olive grove incident and our respective blame allocations regarding it. We found a konoba with outdoor seating, ordered grilled fish and pršut and a carafe of local white wine, and slowly remembered how to be pleasant to one another. The kids discovered that Croatian chips are excellent chips, which bought us enough peace to actually taste our food.

What struck me most about those first hours was the particular rhythm of marina life. The serious sailors with their weather-beaten competence, the holidaymakers like us with our slightly too-new boat shoes, the locals who treated the whole waterfront as their extended living room. By day two I had already established my own little routine: early morning coffee on the balcony watching the harbour wake up, a swim from the small rocky beach nearby before the heat became oppressive, then a slow breakfast while the children complained about having to wear sun cream.

I kept thinking about that wrong turn. How something that felt like a disaster at the time became, within hours, just a funny story we were already telling each other. "Remember when Dad drove us into the olives?" The children will dine out on that one for years. There is something about family holidays, particularly the self-catering variety where you are doing your own cooking and laundry and general existing, that throws these small mishaps into sharp relief. They become the bits you remember more than the perfect moments, somehow.

By our third morning, the sat nav had been banished to the glove compartment and we were navigating by landmarks like sensible people. The bakery near the marina entrance where I bought still-warm burek. The spot on the waterfront where the local men gathered each evening to play cards and shout good-naturedly at one another. The particular boat whose owner seemed to spend more time polishing it than actually taking it anywhere, a habit I found oddly comforting to observe.

We did very little of what you might call proper sightseeing. A boat trip to a nearby island one day, a lazy afternoon at the beach, several iterations of the same walk into town for dinner. The apartment at Trogir Marina was not trying to be luxurious, and it was not trying to be anything other than a comfortable, practical base for people who want to be near the water. That honesty appealed to me. The children learned to tie basic knots from a retired German sailor who took pity on their enthusiastic incompetence. I read two entire books, something that had not happened in approximately four years. My husband perfected the art of doing absolutely nothing on a sun lounger, a skill he has since failed to replicate at home.

I suppose what I am saying is that our first impressions became our lasting impressions, in the best possible way. The place was exactly what it appeared to be: straightforward, maritime, slightly ramshackle in that authentic coastal Croatian fashion. No hidden disappointments, no glossy brochure promises that failed to materialise. Just a good balcony, a decent location, and enough local character to make you feel you had actually been somewhere rather than merely visited it.

On our final morning I stood on that balcony again with my final cup of temperamental-kettle tea. The same boats, the same impossible water colour, the same card players already gathering at their usual spot. I felt that particular melancholy of holidays ending, mixed with the quiet satisfaction of having done very little very well. The sat nav stayed in the glove compartment all the way back to the airport, by the way. My husband drove, I navigated using actual road signs like it was 1994, and we did not get lost once. Some lessons, it seems, do eventually stick.