I have never been particularly gifted at reading maps, which is how I found myself standing in a car park in Split, convinced my holiday let was somewhere inside a Lidl. The sat-nav had given up on me three roundabouts ago, and my phone was now insisting that the NovaSol property in Makarska was located precisely where I stood, between a shopping trolley and a man selling sunglasses. It was not. After twenty minutes of increasingly desperate circling, I realised I had punched in the wrong postcode three hours previously. The actual property was still an hour down the coast. I bought a bottle of water and some emergency chocolate from the Lidl and set off again, feeling very much like the sort of person who should not be trusted with independent travel.

The drive itself, once I stopped following my own invented route, was the sort of thing that makes you forgive yourself for being an idiot. The Adriatic Highway clings to the coastline like it is frightened of falling in, and around every bend there is another impossible view: limestone cliffs dropping straight into water so blue it looks filtered, little stone villages perched above the sea as if they have grown there naturally. I stopped twice for no reason other than that a lay-by appeared and I needed to remember how to breathe properly.

Makarska revealed itself gradually, which is the best way for a town to arrive. You come around a final curve and there it is, tucked between the Biokovo mountains and a bay that curves like a drawn bow. The old town squeezes itself into the space where the mountain allows, a jumble of stone houses and narrow passages that clearly predate any concept of town planning. I found my property eventually, up a steep lane where my wheeled suitcase developed a personality and attempted to escape downhill without me. The apartment itself was one of those solid Dalmatian stone buildings with green shutters and a terrace that looked directly out to sea. I stood there for some time, eating my emergency chocolate and feeling that particular smugness of having arrived somewhere properly, even if by accident.

The mishap with the postcode turned out to be the best thing I could have done. Had I arrived on schedule, I would have followed the sensible path: beach, restaurant, sleep, repeat. Instead, having lost half a day to incompetence, I found myself wandering without purpose that first evening, too late for organised activity, too early for dinner, simply walking to recover from the car.

I took a turning that looked like it might lead somewhere, then another that definitely did not. The old town of Makarska rewards this kind of behaviour. The main square is obvious enough, all cafes and the baroque church of St Mark, but step one alley away and you are in a different place entirely. I found myself in a passage so narrow I could touch both walls, where someone had hung their washing across the street like a banner. A cat watched me from a windowsill with the expression of someone who has seen many tourists get lost here and found it consistently amusing.

The passage delivered me to a small courtyard I never found again, though I tried twice later in the week. An old woman was selling something from her doorway, I never established what, and three men were playing cards at a plastic table with the intensity of people conducting serious business. Nobody looked up. I stood there like a fool, feeling suddenly and properly abroad, not in the performative sense of restaurants with English menus, but in the way that reminds you that other places continue existing when you are not there to observe them.

I wandered further, losing any sense of direction completely. The town climbs into the hillside in layers, and I kept finding myself on terraces that were not streets, looking down on roofs I had just walked across. Somewhere above the harbour I stumbled on a tiny konoba, really just a room with four tables and a man grilling fish on a terrace that could not legally have been called a terrace, more a widened bit of staircase. He did not have a menu. He had fish, and he had wine from a local cooperative in unlabelled bottles. I ate there twice more that week and never learned its name. The second time I arrived from an entirely different direction and was not certain it was the same place until the man recognised me and said nothing, simply nodded and started grilling.

That first evening I found my way down eventually, though I could not have told you how. The harbour lights were on, the promenade was doing its evening stroll, and I walked back to my apartment along the seafront feeling pleasantly disoriented, as if I had been somewhere I was not supposed to find. The next morning I tried to retrace my steps with purpose and failed entirely, which I now understand is the point. Makarska gives up its hidden corners only to the lost and the wandering, to those who arrive with wrong postcodes and no plan, who are willing to follow a cat down a passage that cannot possibly lead anywhere useful.

I still cannot read a map properly. I consider it a qualification.