I should have known the holiday was going to be character-building when I put the postcode into my sat nav and it directed me to a field full of very unimpressed cows. Three U-turns, one slightly heated discussion about whose fault this definitely wasn't, and forty minutes of Danish country lanes later, we finally spotted the sign for Marielyst Strand. I wound down the window to take a photo for proof we'd made it, and promptly inhaled a moth. Not the glamorous arrival I'd imagined.

The drive from Copenhagen had been straightforward enough until that final stretch. Falster's flat landscape gives you a false sense of security. You see endless fields, the odd red-roofed farmhouse, and you think, how hard can this be? The island has other ideas. But there it was eventually, a tidy cluster of holiday homes near the Baltic coast, and ours sitting among them looking impossibly Scandinavian and organised. I felt immediately judged by its neat wooden exterior and sensible outdoor furniture.

My partner had the key code, which was fortunate because I was still coughing up moth remnants and in no state to operate a keypad. The door clicked open and we stepped into that particular hush that only an empty holiday home possesses. You know the one, half peaceful, half slightly eerie, as if the previous occupants have only just vanished and might return for a forgotten toothbrush. I made a beeline for the kitchen to assess the all-important kettle situation, because priorities, and promptly walked straight into a closed patio door that I somehow hadn't noticed. The glass wobbled alarmingly. My dignity did not survive.

The thing about these Danish holiday homes is they're designed for actual living, not just for looking at. The kitchen at Marielyst Strand had everything we needed to pretend we were going to cook elaborate meals, though we both knew we'd end up living on remoulade and whatever the local supermarket had on special offer. The living area opened onto that patio I'd just assaulted, with views across to the shared outdoor area where I could already see a family barbecuing with the kind of effortless competence that made our own efforts feel doomed.

I explored the bedrooms with the enthusiasm of someone checking for ghosts in a very sensible, well-lit environment. The place slept eight apparently, which seemed optimistic given our track record of filling a two-person tent with inexplicable clutter. The bathroom was spotless and featured one of those heated towel rails that Scandinavians consider essential and Britons consider witchcraft. I stood in front of it for longer than necessary, wondering if I could fit one in our London flat and knowing the answer was absolutely not without rewiring the entire building.

By evening we'd established our pattern of mild incompetence. The barbecue instructions were in Danish, which neither of us speaks beyond "tak" and "øl." The outdoor furniture required assembly that we definitely hadn't packed the correct tools for. I managed to trap my finger in a deck chair and said something unprintable that probably carried across to the competent barbecue family. They waved anyway, because Danes are either very polite or very amused by British people, and possibly both.

Sitting on that slightly wobbly assembled chair as darkness finally came, the Baltic somewhere beyond the trees, I felt that particular holiday feeling creep in. Not the Instagram version, all pristine and curated, but the real one, moth-inhalation and trapped fingers and all. We'd arrived chaotic and slightly broken, and the place had absorbed it without comment. The flat fields of Falster stretched away, the sea waited, and we had a week to figure out how to be temporarily competent at being here.

I raised my poorly assembled drink to the competent barbecue family across the way, and they raised theirs back. We'd made it. The rest could wait until morning.