I'd left Manchester with the smug satisfaction of someone who'd packed light for once. No checked bag, just a rucksack and a carry-on stuffed with what I optimistically called "essentials": three books, seventeen snacks, and a swimming costume I'd last worn in 2019. The flight to Rijeka was mercifully short, though the bloke in front of me reclined his seat before we'd even reached cruising altitude, which I took as a personal affront.

The hire car was where things started going properly sideways. I'd booked what the website described as a "compact city vehicle," which turned out to be a Fiat so small that I had to fold myself into it like a camping chair. The sat nav immediately had an existential crisis at the first roundabout, spinning indecisively while I circled three times, growing increasingly frantic, certain I'd become that person in a viral video. By the time I found the coastal road toward Opatija, my knuckles were white and I'd developed a twitch every time a scooter overtook me, which was approximately every eleven seconds.

Opatija Bregi sits in the hills above Opatija proper, and nobody warned me about the incline. The road narrowed to something roughly the width of a generous pavement, then twisted upward through olive groves and past stone houses with shutters painted in faded greens and blues. I passed a woman walking three goats on leads, which I initially assumed was stress-induced hallucination. She waved cheerfully. I waved back, nearly sideswiping a parked Renault.

The actual mishap occurred at the property itself. I'd been given a key code and instructions to find a "discreet lockbox near the entrance." What I found was a metal box camouflaged so effectively against the stone wall that I spent ten minutes patting masonry like a confused archaeologist. When I finally located it, the code worked, the box opened, and I promptly dropped the keys down a drainage grate.

There is a specific quality of silence that follows such moments. The goats, I noticed, had fallen silent. Even the cicadas seemed to pause in judgment.

I spent twenty minutes crouched by that grate, fishing with a wire coat hanger I'd found in the Fiat's boot, wondering what my mother would say about my life choices. A neighbour emerged with coffee and watched with the polite fascination of someone at a slow-burning village fete. We communicated in broken gestures and shared shrugs, which I found rather touching. When I finally hooked the keys, we celebrated with something between a high-five and a handshake, neither of us quite committing.

The villa itself revealed itself gradually, once I'd actually managed to open the door. Stone floors that stayed cool despite the afternoon heat. A kitchen that smelled faintly of rosemary from a previous guest's cooking. I dumped my bags and walked straight to the terrace, because the view demanded immediate attention. Kvarner Bay spread below in shades of blue I didn't know existed, the islands hazy in the distance, Opatija's belle époque buildings clustered along the shoreline like fancy icing.

I'd brought those three books. I knew already I wouldn't open a single one.

That evening, I walked to the nearest konoba, still slightly trembling from the drive and the key incident. The waiter brought pršut and cheese without me asking, apparently sensing my need for salt and stability. I ate slowly, watching the light change over the water, thinking about how I'd nearly let a drainage grate defeat me. There's something humbling about travel, I decided, sipping a local wine I couldn't pronounce. It strips away the illusion that you're particularly competent, then rewards you anyway.

I slept with the shutters open, waking once to moonlight on the bay and the distant sound of a scooter climbing the hill. Somewhere, I suspected, another visitor was circling that same roundabout, wondering where it all went slightly wrong. I wished them luck, and goats, and eventually, this same extraordinary view.