The sat-nav had been promising us arrival in twenty minutes for the best part of an hour, which should have been my first clue that our holiday in Umag Savudrija was off to a classic start. Somewhere near the Slovenian border, convinced I knew better than a woman calmly speaking Croatian from the dashboard, I took what I shall forever call "the scenic route." This translated to twenty minutes of increasingly narrow Istrian lanes, one angry-looking goat, and a moment where the hire car's wing mirror grazed an olive branch with the kind of intimacy that made my partner question several of my life choices.

We finally rolled up to the property in Savudrija proper starving, slightly traumatised, and absolutely ready to be impressed. The place delivered immediately. Terracotta roof, that particular creamy stone you only seem to get in this corner of Croatia, and a terrace that practically begged for a glass of something cold and irresponsible. I stood there making appreciative noises while my partner unpacked, which I maintain is a fair division of labour when one person has just navigated existential goat-related stress.

The kitchen, though. That was where my holiday ambitions truly formed. Spacious, properly equipped, not one of those holiday rental kitchens where you open a drawer and find a single bent fork and a can opener from 1973. I had plans. Grand plans. We were going to eat like locals, cook like locals, become the sort of people who casually throw together truffle pasta after a morning at the market.

Our first evening, naturally, we walked to the nearest konoba instead. About ten minutes along the coast, nothing fancy, just plastic chairs and a grill smoking away outside. I ordered the Istrian ham with truffles because when in Rome, or rather when in a fishing village twenty minutes from Umag. The ham arrived in portions that suggested the chef had taken a personal liking to us, shaved truffles everywhere, my partner had a seafood risotto that made her go quiet in that way that means you do not attempt conversation. We drank local Malvazija, which I am now pretentious enough to pronounce with a slight Croatian flourish, and stumbled back full and happy and slightly wobbly.

The next morning I attacked the local market in Umag with the confidence of a man who absolutely could not identify half the vegetables on display. The traders were patient with my pointing and my terrible "hvala." I came away with tomatoes that actually smelled of something, a hunk of prsut that I justified as essential research, some local olive oil in a bottle with a handwritten label, and what I believed to be sage but later discovered was definitely not sage. My first attempt at cooking lunch involved this mystery herb, some hastily purchased pasta, and a confidence that crumbled approximately four minutes in. We ate it anyway. It was edible in the way that holiday cooking always is, when you are hungry and the wine is cold and the terrace view forgives many culinary sins.

That evening we found another local spot, even smaller, where the owner seemed to run the kitchen and the front of house simultaneously with the kind of effortless competence that made my own kitchen efforts feel particularly tragic. Grilled sardines, simple salad, bread for mopping up oil. The owner brought us grappa afterwards, which I accepted with the enthusiasm of a man who had not learned his lesson about local spirits on previous holidays. My partner laughed at my face. The owner laughed harder. I laughed too, eventually, once my throat recovered.

By day three I had developed what I can only describe as market fever. The morning routine became almost religious. Coffee on the terrace, then a wander to see what looked good, what the fishermen had brought in, which stall had the best figs. I bought squid one morning with genuine intention, watched a YouTube video on cleaning them in the property's excellent Wi-Fi, and produced something that resembled food only through determination and excessive garlic. My partner was kind about it. She is kind about many things. The local restaurant owners, I suspect, were grateful.

We found our favourite pub-like spot by accident, a place near the marina that did simple grilled meat and cold beer and seemed to attract the same local faces each evening. By our fourth visit the barman nodded in recognition and started pouring my beer when I walked through the door. This remains one of my proudest travel achievements. We ate cevapcici there, those little grilled sausages, with raw onion and ajvar, and I felt genuinely integrated into local life despite speaking approximately eleven words of Croatian, most of them food-related.

The property's barbecue saw action on our final evening. I had finally, through trial and embarrassing error, learned which herbs were actually sage. We grilled local sausages, made a simple tomato salad with market tomatoes that finally justified all my market enthusiasm, opened the last bottle of Malvazija, and ate watching the light change over the water. My partner noted that I had finally cooked something genuinely decent. I noted that it had only taken me a week and several near-disasters. We agreed this was character building.

Driving away, sat-nav firmly muted, I caught myself already planning what I would cook next time, which market stall I would revisit, whether that barman would remember me. The goat, I felt, would remember me too. Some holidays give you sunsets and relaxation. This one gave me a genuine appreciation for Istrian olive oil, a minor grappa tolerance, and the humbling realisation that watching a local cook is not the same as being one. I would not trade it.