I should have known the holiday had truly begun when I managed to leave my entire toiletry bag on the kitchen table at home. There I was, three hours into the drive from Rijeka Airport, feeling terribly smug about my packing skills, only to discover I'd brought absolutely nothing to clean my teeth with except a half-sucked mint from the flight. Brilliant start, that.

The journey down through Kvarner Bay had been lovely enough to soften the blow. The road hugs the coast in that gloriously dramatic way, all rocky headlands dropping into blue-green water, with the occasional grand old hotel peering down from the hillsides like a retired aristocrat watching the boats go by. Opatija, when you pass through, still carries that proper Habsburg swagger, all ornate facades and seaside promenades where people in sensible shoes march about with great purpose. I was rather glad we were pushing on to Lovran, if I'm honest. Opatija's lovely, but I wasn't after lovely. I was after doing absolutely nothing whatsoever.

We found the place down a narrow lane that seemed to narrow further the more we insisted our hire car would fit. The property sits in that sweet spot between the two towns, close enough to stroll to Lovran's harbour for a morning coffee, far enough that you feel you've escaped entirely. The garden was what got me first. Not manicured, not trying too hard, just Mediterranean planting doing what it does best - fig trees heavy with fruit, lavender buzzing with bees, a terrace where someone had clearly spent many happy hours doing precisely what I intended to do. Which was, to be clear, very little indeed.

The first morning, I woke without an alarm for the first time in months. The sort of waking where you lie there wondering what day it is, then deciding it doesn't matter anyway. I made coffee in the little kitchen, carried it outside in my pyjamas like the slovenly creature I truly am, and sat on that terrace watching the light change over the bay. The Kvarner has this particular quality in the morning, a softness to the air that makes everything feel slightly unreal, as though you've wandered into a painting and the painter has nipped out for a smoke.

I had brought three books, which seemed optimistic for a week. I finished two and a half, which tells you everything about my activity levels. There was a hammock of questionable structural integrity that I tested daily, always with a small thrill of danger. I read there. I read on the terrace. I read in a corner of the garden where someone had placed a chair specifically for people like me, people who need to be gently encouraged towards idleness.

Lovran itself provided the bare minimum of movement required to keep my legs from seizing entirely. The harbour is small, unpretentious, with fishing boats and the smell of nets drying in sun. I'd wander down for a coffee, perhaps a pastry, watch the old men play cards with the intensity of chess grandmasters. Then back up the hill, slowly, always slowly, to resume my proper position doing absolutely nothing in particular.

There's something about a garden holiday that strips away the nonsense, isn't there? No sights to tick off, no queues, no feeling you ought to be somewhere else. Just the rhythm of daylight, the occasional swim, the pleasure of watching figs ripen with the patience of someone who has nowhere to be. I thought about work precisely twice, and both times the thought drifted off like a lazy wasp, unable to find anything to land on.

On our last evening, I sat on that terrace with a glass of local white, watching the lights come on across the bay, and felt something I hadn't in ages. Boredom, perhaps, but the good kind. The kind that comes from being full up with quiet, with having given yourself permission to simply exist for a while. My teeth were clean by then, you'll be relieved to hear. I'd bought a toothbrush in Lovran on day two, along with a small tube of toothpaste that now lives in my travel bag permanently, a little reminder that the best holidays begin with small disasters and end with the realisation that doing very little is, occasionally, everything you need.