I should have known our Crikvenica holiday was off to a classic start when I confidently loaded the boot at Zagreb Airport, patted myself on the back for remembering the beach towels, and then realised I had left my actual suitcase on the living room floor in Leeds. There it sat, presumably having a lovely quiet week without us, while I spent the first two hours of our drive to Kvarner Bay in a state of mild panic, wearing the same jeans and t-shirt I had flown in. My wife found this hilarious for approximately fifteen minutes, then remembered she had packed all her own clothes and became significantly less sympathetic.

The drive down from Zagreb is actually rather lovely once you stop hyperventilating about underwear logistics. The motorway gives way to winding coastal roads, and suddenly there is the Adriatic, glittering away like someone has spilt a tray of diamonds. We were staying in a place called Grizane, just inland from Crikvenica proper, which sounded charmingly rural and exactly the sort of spot where nobody would notice if you wore the same outfit for several days running.

Finding the property proved entertaining in itself. Our sat nav developed what I can only describe as an existential crisis somewhere near Dramalj, insisting we turn into what was clearly a vineyard. We crawled along narrow lanes, hedgerows brushing both wing mirrors, my wife reading directions from her phone while our youngest asked for the fourteenth time whether we were there yet. A local chap watering his tomatoes watched us pass three times, each time with increasing amusement, until he finally took pity and pointed us up a steep track I would genuinely have mistaken for a goat path.

And then we were there. The house sat among olive trees and what I later learned were fig trees, though at first I just thought someone had planted very optimistic bushes. The view stopped me mid-apology to my wife about the suitcase situation. Kvarner Bay spread out below, that particular blue you only seem to get in this corner of Croatia, with the island of Krk sitting offshore looking rather pleased with itself. I stood there in my increasingly fragrant travel clothes and felt something loosen in my chest.

The place itself had that lovely lived-in feeling you do not always get with holiday rentals. A covered terrace where you could imagine spending entire afternoons, a barbecue that looked like it had actually been used rather than just photographed for the listing, and a garden that was not too manicured - slightly wild, slightly chaotic, rather like our family really. The children immediately vanished to investigate what they called "the fort" and I called "a slightly overgrown stone outbuilding," and I heard my wife laugh properly for the first time that day.

I managed to find a supermarket in Crikvenica that evening, buying an entirely new holiday wardrobe with the sheepish energy of a man who has made poor life choices. The shop assistant did not bat an eyelid at my single-minded purchasing of seven identical t-shirts and enough pants to last a fortnight. Back at the house, we cooked simple pasta on that well-used barbecue, sat on the terrace as the light faded over the bay, and I watched my children chase fireflies in a garden that smelled of rosemary and warm stone.

That first evening, still slightly ridiculous in my emergency clothes, I understood exactly why people return to places like this. Not for perfection, but for the particular peace of a hillside above Kvarner Bay, where your biggest problem is a forgotten suitcase and even that becomes a story you will tell for years.