I have never been so relieved to see a car park in my life. Six hours on the road from Hamburg, two wrong turns around Kappeln, and one spectacular argument with a sat nav that insisted "Olpenitz" was somewhere in the middle of the Schlei inlet, we finally rolled up to Ostseeresort Olpenitz. My other half was driving. I was navigating. The marriage very nearly ended somewhere near Lindaunis Bridge.

The mishap came immediately after we found the place. I leapt out to grab our key, tripped over absolutely nothing, and scattered an entire bag of Haribo across the lobby. A very patient German woman watched me crawl around collecting Goldbaren while her Labrador helped himself to the ones I missed. "Willkommen," she said, with impressive restraint.

Our apartment was one of the waterfront ones, all pale wood and enormous windows looking out towards the Baltic. I had grand plans for that kitchen. Grand plans. I'd packed my favourite cast iron pan, a jar of Maldon salt, and enough optimism to fuel a small nation. "We'll cook fresh fish every night," I'd announced in the car. "Markets. Local produce. Simple, honest cooking."

The nearest supermarket was a Real in Kappeln, which we visited the next morning. I loaded up with North Sea shrimp, smoked fish, dark bread, and something labelled "Gruenkohl" that I convinced myself I could handle. Back at the resort, I attempted a shrimp omelette. What emerged from that pan was a rubbery yellow disc with crustacean casualties scattered across it like a seafood crime scene. My partner ate it without comment, which was somehow worse than criticism.

The local pub situation needed investigation. We found Zur Mole in Kappeln on our third evening, a proper harbour-side place with fishing nets on the walls and a landlord who spoke exactly three words of English. We communicated through pointing and hopeful smiling. The fish soup was magnificent, thick with saffron and proper chunks of whatever had been caught that morning. I had two bowls and a glass of Flensburger Pilsner that tasted like it had been brewed specifically to wash away my omelette shame.

Saturday brought the Kappeln weekly market, which I attacked with the fervour of someone who had watched too much food television. I bought fresh smoked eel from a man who'd been doing it for forty years, apples from a farm outside Schaalby, and cheese that smelled strongly enough to require its own seat in the car. That evening I constructed what I called a "North German ploughman's" on our balcony. The eel was extraordinary. The cheese was possibly alive. We ate it watching the light fade over the water, wrapped in blankets against the Baltic breeze, and I felt genuinely accomplished for the first time all week.

Sunday morning I attempted Brunkager, those Danish ginger biscuits that drift across the border in this part of Schleswig-Holstein. I do not own a kitchen scale. The recipe was in Danish. The results were technically edible in the way that gravel is technically edible. We took the surviving biscuits on a walk along the Olpenitz shoreline and fed them to gulls, who seemed politely uncertain.

The resort's own restaurant, we discovered too late, did a perfectly respectable Fruhstuck with excellent bread and proper coffee. We ate there on our final morning, me still slightly haunted by my baking failure, my partner reading the menu with the expression of someone who had earned this particular meal through considerable suffering.

I left Ostseeresort Olpenitz with my cast iron pan slightly warped, my culinary confidence in similar condition, and a bag of that smoked eel in the boot. Some holidays teach you about a place. This one taught me that I should probably book apartments with better restaurant access, and that German supermarket kale requires more respect than I initially gave it.