I have never been so relieved to see a car park in my life. After six hours on the autobahn with a boot full of groceries, a sat-nav that developed what I can only describe as an existential crisis somewhere near Hamburg, and one spectacularly ill-timed loo break at a service station that turned out to be a building site, we finally pulled into Ostseeresort Olpenitz. I was ready to kiss the tarmac. My partner Dave was ready to divorce me. The sat-nav, I assume, was ready for therapy.

The mishap, because there is always a mishap with us, happened about twenty minutes from the resort. I had been in charge of the booking confirmation, a responsibility I took very seriously by which I mean I glanced at it once on my phone three weeks ago and promptly forgot every detail. So when we reached the security barrier and I confidently announced the wrong booking reference, then the wrong surname, then what I can only describe as a creative spelling of our actual surname, the poor chap in the booth looked at me with the weary patience of a man who has seen this exact scene approximately four thousand times. Dave sat in the passenger seat making that face. You know the one. The face that says "I love you but I am currently revising my entire life philosophy."

I found the correct reference eventually, scribbled on a crumpled receipt at the bottom of my handbag, nestled between a half-eaten cereal bar and a parking ticket from Brighton. The barrier rose. We crept through. I did not make eye contact with Dave for several minutes.

The resort itself materialised through a corridor of pine trees, all very Nordic and purposeful, and suddenly there was the Baltic glinting beyond the dunes. The architecture is that particular German coastal style, lots of clean angles and timber cladding, the sort of place where you feel immediately underdressed if your raincoat does not coordinate with the landscape. Our apartment was in one of the terraced houses, a smart little number with a balcony that promised sea views if you leaned out at precisely the right angle and squinted past the neighbour's laundry.

The key collection involved another minor adventure. The code for the lockbox, which I had also filed away in my mental system of organised chaos, turned out to be one digit different from what I had remembered. I tried my version three times before Dave silently took the phone, read the actual message, and opened it on the first go. He said nothing. This was worse than saying something.

But then we stepped inside, and I will be honest with you, the tension of the journey fell away like a coat you did not realise you were still wearing. The place smelled of new wood and salt air. The living area opened onto that balcony, and beyond it, if you did indeed lean and squint, the grey-blue shimmer of the Schlei inlet. There was a kitchen that actually had proper knives, which is rarer in holiday lets than you might think, and a sofa that did not have that suspicious vinyl squeak of institutional furniture.

I made us both coffee, mostly as a peace offering. We stood on the balcony in silence for a moment, watching a couple of late-season windsurfers making a hash of things down on the water. Dave finally spoke. "Next time," he said, "I am in charge of the paperwork." I did not argue. I have learned that some defeats are simply wisdom in disguise.

The rest of that first evening was spent in the happy stupor of arrival. We unpacked badly, ate bread and cheese for dinner because nobody could face the supermarket run, and walked down to the little harbour area as the light faded. The resort has that curious feeling of being both finished and still finding its feet, some buildings newer than others, a few plots still waiting for their moment. But the boardwalks through the dunes are proper, solid things, and the water is everywhere, insistent and calm at the same time.

I fell asleep that night to the sound of rigging clinking somewhere out on the marina, too tired to care that I had left the washing up undone. Some arrivals are elegant. Ours was not. But sitting there in the half-dark, with the Baltic breathing beyond the window, I thought that perhaps the messy arrivals are the ones you remember. The perfect ones blur together. The ones where you humiliate yourself at a security barrier and nearly dissolve your marriage over a lockbox, those are the ones that earn their place.

We woke to grey skies and the smell of pine, and I knew already that I would not mind one bit if the weather stayed doubtful. The apartment had underfloor heating and good books we had brought and nowhere particular to be. That first morning, I made more coffee and did not check my phone once. Dave handed me the booking confirmation, now printed out and folded into his wallet with what I can only describe as aggressive efficiency. I took it without comment.

Some holidays teach you things about places. This one, I suspected already, was going to teach me things about myself. Mostly that I should never be trusted with important numbers, but possibly other things too.