I'd been dreaming of Istria for months, so when my mate Dave and I finally piled out of our hire car at the villa near Labin, I was already composing the smug social media post in my head. Sun-drenched terrace, glass of Malvazija, perhaps a thoughtful gaze toward the Kvarner Gulf. What actually happened was that I tripped over a rogue olive root while carrying two suitcases, went arse over tit into a lavender bush, and spent my first five minutes in Croatia extracting bees from my shirt while Dave laughed so hard he nearly dropped the hire car keys down a drainage gully.

The journey from Pula Airport had been straightforward enough, if you consider driving on the wrong side of the road while navigating winding Istrian hill roads straightforward. We'd stopped once in Vodnjan for petrol and what Dave optimistically called "provisions" - two bottles of local wine, some prsut that was clearly too fancy for us, and a bag of crisps that turned out to be paprika flavour. The final stretch up to Labin proper involved increasingly narrow lanes where I became intimately familiar with the concept of reversing for oncoming tractors. By the time we spotted the stone walls of our villa, my hands were welded to the steering wheel at ten and two.

The property itself, when I finally extracted myself from the shrubbery and stopped doing an impromptu bee dance, was properly lovely in that unpretentious Istrian way. Thick stone walls that have clearly seen off Austrians, Italians, and probably a few Venetians before them. Terracotta roof tiles. Shutters that actually shut, which I noted with the satisfaction of someone who grew up in a house where the bathroom window was permanently stuck open. The pool glimmered at us like a promise, though at that particular moment I was more interested in the outdoor shower and whether it would wash away both lavender pollen and my lingering dignity.

Dave, having recovered from his key-related near-miss, immediately attempted to operate the barbecue. This involved ten minutes of muttering in Croatian at what was clearly a perfectly ordinary gas valve, followed by the revelation that he'd been turning it the wrong way while repeatedly clicking the igniter. When it finally roared to life, he jumped back with the theatrical shock of a man who'd never successfully cooked outdoors before, which he hadn't. I left him to it and explored the terrace, which offered exactly the view I'd been imagining - rolling green hills, distant glimpse of blue sea, and enough olive groves to make you briefly consider abandoning your entire life to become a small-scale producer of very expensive oil.

The first evening brought that particular quality of Istrian dusk where everything goes golden and slightly hazy, like someone's applied an Instagram filter to actual reality. We sat with our too-fancy prsut and our definitely adequate wine, watching swallows dart about the eaves. Dave's barbecue efforts were edible, which was the kindest thing either of us could manage. I found myself thinking, not for the first time, that my life could use more of this - more stone walls that have survived centuries, more accidental lavender encounters, more evenings where the main task is deciding whether to open the second bottle.

Of course, by morning I'd managed to lock myself out on the terrace in my pants, but that's a story for another time, and anyway, the coffee was excellent and the view hadn't changed.