I have never been so relieved to see a set of stone steps in my life. After a three-hour drive from Split airport, most of it spent navigating coastal roads while my partner read the directions with the confidence of someone who had definitely not printed them upside down, we finally spotted the sign for Omis Celina. The relief lasted approximately twelve seconds, which is how long it took me to realise I had packed our wheelie suitcase with the structural integrity of a wet paper bag, and that the final approach to our holiday home involved roughly eighty uneven stone steps winding up the hillside.

I am not a fit man. I mention this now because it becomes relevant later when I am weeping into my grilled fish. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The suitcase, already wounded from the flight, committed suicide on step forty-seven. The handle snapped clean off, and my partner, who had pranced ahead with nothing but a rucksack and a sense of moral superiority, had to come back and help me wrestle our possessions up the remaining steps. We arrived at the door of CSC055 looking like we had swum from Split. A local cat observed our suffering with the blank indifference that only cats and teenagers can truly master.

But then we opened the door, and I understood why people bother with all those steps.

The view from the terrace stopped me mid-groan. The Cetina River mouth spread out below, that extraordinary colour that sits somewhere between turquoise and impossibly turquoise, with the old town of Omis huddled against the cliffs on one side and the Adriatic stretching out on the other. My partner handed me a cold beer from the fridge, and I decided that perhaps I did not hate stairs after all. Perhaps stairs were my friend. Perhaps I would write a thank-you letter to stairs.

We had planned to cook properly that first evening. The kitchen at Omis Celina is genuinely well-equipped, which is rare for holiday lets in my experience. Usually you get one blunt knife and a pan with mysterious scorch marks that suggest previous guests attempted alchemistry. Here there was actual counter space, a decent hob, and enough utensils to attempt something ambitious. We had visions of preparing fresh fish with local olive oil, perhaps some grilled vegetables, a bottle of Plavac Mali to wash it down. We were going to eat like Dalmatians.

What we actually did was walk back down those eighty steps, discover a konoba roughly three minutes along the waterfront, and eat grilled sardines prepared by someone who knew what they were doing. I have no regrets. The sardines were perfect, charred just enough, served with nothing but lemon and good bread. We drank house wine that tasted of sunshine and minerals and cost less than a London pint. My partner attempted to speak Croatian to the waiter, who responded in flawless English with the patient kindness of someone who has witnessed this many times before.

The next morning I woke early, still on UK time, and decided to explore the local market in Omis old town. This involved more steps, naturally, though these were medieval and therefore somehow felt more authentic than our private staircase. The market was small but properly local, not the tourist-facing version I had feared. An elderly woman sold me tomatoes that smelled like tomatoes, which sounds obvious but is genuinely shocking if you normally shop in British supermarkets. I bought olive oil from a man who produced it from his family's trees in the hills above. I bought dried lavender because my partner likes it and I am attempting to be thoughtful. I bought more than we could reasonably carry back up eighty steps, which is how I found myself at midday, sweating profusely in a kitchen that now smelled gloriously of ripe peaches and herbs, wondering if I had made a terrible error.

I had not, as it turned out. That evening I attempted a simple peka-style preparation with chicken and potatoes, using the oven and a heavy pot to approximate the traditional bell-lid method. It was not authentic. It was probably not even particularly good. But eaten on that terrace with the sun setting over the river and a bottle of Posip from the supermarket in Omis, it tasted like the best meal I had ever made. My partner was kind enough not to mention that the potatoes were slightly underdone. The cat from earlier appeared on the terrace wall and judged us silently. I offered it a piece of chicken. It declined, which felt fair.

The following days established a rhythm I could happily maintain indefinitely. Mornings for the market or the small supermarket near the river, where I became embarrassingly excited by the selection of local cheeses. Afternoons for attempting to cook whatever I had bought, with varying degrees of success. One evening I tried to make crni rizot, the black squid ink risotto, and spent three days with stained fingers and a kitchen that looked like a crime scene. It was delicious and I would do it again, though perhaps not in a rental property with white walls.

We found our regular konoba, because of course you must have one. It was not the closest to the property, nor the most recommended in the guidebooks we had not brought. It was simply the one where the owner remembered our order from the second visit, where the grilled octopus was consistently tender, where the rakija appeared unbidden after the meal and burned pleasantly all the way down. I am not normally a spirits man, but there is something about eating fish by the water in Dalmatia that makes rakija feel like medicine rather than indulgence.

On our final evening, having conquered the steps enough times that my legs had stopped complaining, I attempted a proper fish grill on the barbecue that came with the terrace. I had watched the technique at our konoba, the way they scored the sea bream and brushed it with olive oil and herbs, the confident timing that came from decades of practice. My version was adequate. The fish was cooked through, which I counted as victory. The setting sun turned the river golden. My partner opened another bottle, and we sat in comfortable silence broken only by my occasional muttering about whether the skin was crispy enough.

It was not, for the record. But sat on that terrace, slightly drunk on good wine and the particular contentment that comes from doing very little very slowly, I found myself reflecting on how rarely I cook at home in London. There it feels like a chore, something squeezed between work and exhaustion. Here, with ingredients that demanded so little manipulation, with time that moved differently, cooking had become a pleasure again. Or perhaps it was simply that everything tastes better when you have earned it through eighty stone steps and one broken suitcase.

We finished the wine. The cat, which had apparently decided we were acceptable, allowed me one brief stroke before stalking off into the darkness. I did not write that thank-you letter to stairs, but I thought about it. Some debts cannot be properly repaid.