The sat nav had been insisting we were two minutes from Opatija Martina for the last twenty minutes, which I now realise was its polite Croatian way of saying "give up and park near that man selling melons." My husband Dave was gripping the steering wheel of our hired Fiat like he was landing a plane in high winds, while our youngest, Molly, had somehow managed to get a packet of crisps stuck in her hair. The mishap that really set the tone, though, was me confidently opening what I believed to be our villa door, only to find myself face-to-face with a very surprised German couple eating their lunch in nothing but swimming costumes. Wrong property. Very wrong property. I backed out making noises that I can only describe as a distressed owl, and Dave found the actual Opatija Martina fifty metres further up the lane, tucked behind an olive tree that had been deliberately blocking our view, apparently for comedic effect.

The villa itself, when we finally reached the correct one, immediately made up for my mortifying entrance. It is the sort of place that looks effortlessly put-together in a way that makes you simultaneously relaxed and slightly aware of your own inadequacy. Stone walls, terracotta roof, a terrace that practically demands you sit on it with a cold drink and absolutely no intention of moving. The children shot through the front door like small, excited missiles, and I heard Molly declare the upstairs bedroom "hers forever" approximately four seconds after seeing it. Dave and I stood in the kitchen, which is open and bright and clearly designed for people who actually enjoy cooking on holiday rather than just making toast, and we had one of those married moments where no words are needed because we are both thinking the same thing: we are going to argue about who gets to grill the fish later.

The garden was what really sold it to me, though. A proper outdoor space with a barbecue area and enough room for the children to run about without immediately injuring themselves or breaking something expensive. There is a covered terrace where we have already decided we will eat every single meal, weather permitting, and probably several where it does not strictly permit. I found myself already planning nothing. That is the strange thing about arriving somewhere like this. You spend weeks organising a holiday, packing, negotiating time off, and then you get there and the ambition drains out of you like water from a bath, replaced by this glorious, heavy desire to simply exist in a pleasant location for a while.

Dave opened a bottle of local white wine that was colder than it had any right to be, given our fridge had only been on an hour, and we sat on those terrace chairs as the children explored the bedrooms with the intensity of property surveyors. The bay was visible in the distance, that particular blue that seems almost rude in its intensity, and somewhere down the hill we could hear the faint clatter of Opatija waking up from its afternoon rest. I thought about the German couple, probably still discussing the strange English woman who had invaded their lunch, and I laughed properly for the first time in what felt like months. Holidays do this to you. They strip away the competence you have carefully built up in normal life and replace it with a cheerful, bumbling version of yourself who opens other people's doors and considers it character building.

We have no plans for tomorrow beyond possibly walking down to the Lungomare, that famous coastal path, and almost certainly not doing so if the morning is too hot or someone has lost a shoe. The children have already established a complicated territory system involving the outdoor furniture. Dave is reading a book he has no intention of finishing. I am sitting here with my wine, slightly sunburned from the journey despite not having been anywhere near a beach yet, and I am absolutely certain that this is exactly where we need to be. The chaos of arrival is already softening into something slower and sweeter, and I find I do not mind one bit that I began our stay by terrifying a middle-aged man from Munich. It is, I suspect, the first of many small stories we will collect here, and I am already looking forward to telling it badly over dinner tonight, with the barbecue smoking and the children half-asleep in their chairs, and the Kvarner Bay doing absolutely nothing except being beautiful in the background.