I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong cottage in Marielyst. There I was, wrestling with the key code at number eighteen, muttering about modern technology, when a very polite Danish man opened the door and asked if I was lost. I was, in every sense. Our actual place was three doors down, and my partner was already inside making a cup of tea and wondering where I'd got to. Not my finest moment, but it set the tone for a week of cheerful chaos.

The journey from the ferry at Rodbyhavn had been straightforward enough, though I'd made the classic error of skipping lunch in favour of what I assumed would be a quick supermarket stop. By the time we found our actual cottage, I was ready to eat my own arm. The kitchen, thankfully, was bright and properly equipped, which was just as well because my first cooking attempt was an unmitigated disaster. I'd bought what I thought were cooking sausages from the local Meny, turned out they were some sort of specialist hot dog situation meant for boiling, and I pan-fried them into leathery oblivion. We ate them anyway, standing at the counter with too much mustard and a stubborn refusal to admit defeat.

The following morning I found the proper butcher in Marielyst village, a proper old-school place where I pointed and smiled and came away with pork chops that actually responded to heat in the way nature intended. That evening we ate like royalty, or at least like people who had finally located edible protein. I even attempted a Danish-style potato salad with the tiny new potatoes from a farm shop just outside the village. It was slightly too much dill, but who's counting.

Breakfast became our ritual. The cottage had a decent coffee machine, and I developed an unhealthy relationship with the bakery in Marielyst's little shopping area. Fresh rundstykker every other day, still warm if you timed it right, with decent butter and the thin sliced cheese that the Danes do so well. I kept meaning to branch out to the darker rye breads, but those round morning rolls had me in their grip.

The local pubs and eating spots were a mixed blessing for my waistline. There's a place near the beach that does a respectable fish platter, nothing fancy, just properly cooked local catch with remoulade and lemon. We went twice. The first time I spilled half my beer trying to photograph the sunset through the window, which my partner found hilarious and I found character-building. The second time I kept both hands on my glass and my attention on the food, which was the right call.

Marielyst itself is essentially a string of holiday cottages and a modest village centre, so we didn't travel far for our entertainment. The small supermarket became weirdly familiar, me wandering the aisles trying to decipher Danish labels and making questionable choices. I bought something I thought was cooking cream that turned out to be some kind of cultured buttermilk situation, and my attempted pasta sauce was frankly tragic. We laughed about it over takeaway pizza from the one place that delivers, sitting on the cottage's little terrace with the evening light doing that long, slow Scandinavian fade.

The highlight, food-wise, was a barbecue we attempted on our final evening. I'd finally learned which sausages to buy, had decent steaks from my butcher friend, and even managed not to incinerate the corn on the cob. We ate outside as the temperature dropped, wrapped in blankets like a pair of middle-aged burritos, and I felt genuinely proud of myself. From wrong cottage to almost-competent outdoor cook in one week. Not bad going, really.

I came home with a slightly expanded belt and a newfound respect for Danish dairy labelling, which feels like a proper holiday achievement.