The ferry from Prizna was meant to be the easy bit. I'd done the hard yards: Manchester to Zadar, Zadar to the coast, then a winding drive down to the port that had me questioning every life choice that led me to hire a Fiat 500. But no, the real trouble came when I tried to be clever. Saw a queue of cars and thought, "I'll nip to the loo while we're waiting." Missed the announcement. Missed the boat entirely. Stood on the pier like a proper lemon watching my ferry shrink toward Pag island, with all my luggage sat happily in the boot of a car that was now sailing away without me. Three hours till the next one. I ate an entire packet of digestives I'd meant to save for the flat and made friends with a stray cat who, frankly, seemed embarrassed for me.

By the time I actually rolled up to the Pag Novalja place, it was half ten at night and I looked like I'd slept in the Fiat, which I nearly had. The key was in one of those little lockboxes, and I spent a good ten minutes jabbing numbers in the dark while a man from three doors down watched from his balcony, smoking something that definitely wasn't tobacco. "First time?" he called down. Mate, you have no idea.

The flat itself was spotless, I'll give it that. Proper modern kitchen, air con that actually worked, and a terrace I couldn't appreciate till morning because I was too busy having a shower that lasted approximately forty minutes. Fell into bed still slightly damp, still slightly furious with myself, but alive.

Morning changed everything. Opened those terrace doors and there it was: Kvarner Bay glittering back at me like it was showing off. The light out here is different. Sharper. Makes everything look slightly unreal, like someone's turned the saturation up on all of Croatia.

I went hunting for coffee and found Marija instead. Ran the little konoba round the corner, must've been seventy, built like a rugby prop, absolutely no patience for my attempted Croatian. "You English," she said, which she pronounced more like "Ink-lish," "always apologising for language. I speak six. You speak one. Who should apologise?" Fair point, that. She made me a coffee so strong my hands shook for an hour and told me about her husband who'd fished these waters for fifty years before deciding one morning he'd rather keep bees instead. "Now he has bees, I have fish, nobody is happy." She cackled at her own joke. I think it was a joke.

Down at the harbour I got talking to Dario, who was mending nets with the kind of patience I can't manage with anything. Told me he'd never left Pag, never wanted to. "Where is better?" he asked, genuinely puzzled. I started listing places and he just kept shaking his head, not dismissively, more like he was genuinely weighing them and finding them wanting. His mate Ante turned up with a crate of sardines and spent twenty minutes trying to sell me a boat. Not a trip on a boat. An actual boat. "Good price," he kept saying, despite my protests that I'd arrived in a Fiat 500 and had nowhere to put it. "Small boat," he countered, undeterred. "Fits in Fiat." It absolutely did not.

The woman in the bakery, whose name I never caught because she spoke too fast and I was too embarrassed to ask twice, insisted I try the Pag cheese despite my saying I wasn't much for strong flavours. "You eat," she commanded. I ate. It was like being slapped by a sheep, in the best possible way. She nodded, satisfied. "Now you are Croatian," she declared, which I suspect is not legally binding but felt like an achievement nonetheless.

By day three I'd developed a routine. Morning swim, Marija's coffee, wander down to see if Dario and Ante were about, usually with some new scheme to involve me in maritime commerce. The bloke from the first night, turned out he was called Branko, invited me up for a drink on that balcony. Rakija, naturally. Homemade. Tasted like regret and citrus peel. "You missed ferry," he said, grinning. "I saw. Very funny." He'd apparently told half the town. I am, I gather, something of a local legend now. The Englishman who couldn't read a departure board.

There's something about places like this, about the Pag Novalja stretch particularly, where the tourism feels incidental to the actual living. The locals aren't performing Croatianness for visitors; they're just getting on with it, and if you want to slot yourself in, fine, if not, also fine. Marija still charges me the same as everyone else despite our apparent friendship. Dario still tries to give me fishing tips I don't understand. Ante has moved on to trying to sell me a scooter, since the boat clearly didn't land.

I leave tomorrow. Branko's promised me a final rakija, which I suspect will be stronger than the first. Marija's given me a wedge of that cheese for the journey, wrapped in paper like contraband. I still haven't bought a boat, or a scooter, and I checked the ferry times three times last night. But I did learn that missing one boat can lead you to all sorts of unexpected harbours, and that sometimes the best holiday stories start with you standing on a pier, covered in biscuit crumbs, being judged by a cat.