I'd set my heart on a proper Istrian getaway, the sort where you drink local wine on a terrace and pretend you're a slightly more sophisticated version of yourself. So there I was, trundling down from Pula airport in a hire car that smelled aggressively of pine air freshener, clutching directions to a place called Vodnjan Vodnjan. Yes, that's the actual name. I'd booked it partly for the sheer ridiculousness of saying it twice.

The mishap struck approximately three minutes from my destination. I'd stopped at a Konzum for essentials - bread, cheese, and what I believed to be olive oil but was in fact some kind of intense herbal liqueur that locals apparently drink for digestion. The sat nav had been behaving itself until this point, then abruptly decided I needed to navigate Vodnjan's narrow medieval streets during what I can only describe as a minor agricultural parade. A tractor the size of a bungalow blocked my path. I attempted a three-point turn in a space designed for a donkey. There was a gentle crunch.

I got out to discover I'd reversed into a stone wall that had probably witnessed Napoleonic campaigns without so much as a chip. My bumper, however, had not fared so well. A local gentleman emerged from a doorway, surveyed the damage, and offered me a cigarette I didn't want and advice I desperately needed. "Vodnjan Vodnjan?" he asked, pointing up a steep lane I'd have sworn was a footpath. "Straight, then left, then you will see." I never did establish what I would see.

The property sat at the edge of the old town, a traditional Istrian stone house with that satisfyingly chunky architecture that makes you feel immediately grounded. Terracotta roof, wooden shutters, the works. I abandoned the car at what I hoped was a legal angle and dragged my case up a cobbled slope that seemed personally offended by wheeled luggage.

The key was in a lockbox, which sounds simple until you've spent ten minutes punching in codes with thumbs made clumsy by stress and herbal liqueur fumes. When the door finally yielded, I stumbled into cool silence and the particular smell of old stone and recent cleaning. The living space opened onto a covered terrace with views across rolling countryside toward the sea, distant and glittering. I stood there, still clutching my damaged dignity and my bag of misidentified purchases, and something in my shoulders finally dropped.

The kitchen was compact but properly equipped, none of that holiday-rental cutlery where you can't tell spoons from teaspoons. Bedrooms with exposed beams. A bathroom with actual water pressure, which anyone who's holidayed in older European properties will recognise as genuine luxury. I found myself talking to the empty house, commenting on things as if hosting a property show for an audience of none.

That evening I sat on the terrace with the bread, the cheese, and a cautious sip of the digestive liqueur that made my eyes water. Bells rang from Vodnjan's churches, layered and overlapping. Somewhere below, the agricultural parade continued its patient business. My bumper remained dented, my navigation skills questioned, yet here I was in this solid, sun-warmed place with its ridiculous double name and its complete indifference to my arrival chaos.

I think that's what I love about arriving somewhere properly - not the smooth transitions, but the minor disasters that make the eventual stillness feel earned. The terrace faced west, and I watched the light change over the olive groves and vineyards that define this corner of Istria, this peninsula where Italy and Croatia have mingled for centuries in architecture, food, and temperament.

I'd worried about booking somewhere with such a silly name. It turned out to suit the place perfectly - memorable, slightly absurd, utterly itself. I raised my glass of questionable liqueur to the view and to surviving my own competence, which seemed the appropriate Istrian thing to do.