I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to unlock the wrong villa with someone else's key code. There I was, standing outside a lovely little place in Agia Galini, jabbing numbers into a keypad while an increasingly confused German couple watched me from their balcony three doors down. Turns out I'd wandered into the next cul-de-sac entirely, lured astray by the identical whitewash and bougainvillea that seems to clone itself across every Cretan hillside. My actual villa, the Melampes, was a mere hundred metres away, but in that moment I felt like I'd discovered a parallel universe where someone else had already unpacked my suitcase and was probably enjoying my welcome wine.

The journey from Heraklion had been straightforward enough, a hire car hugging the southern coast with the Libyan Sea winking blue to my left. I'd stopped once for a coffee in Mires, a functional little town where the bakeries were doing brisk trade in kalitsounia, those small cheese pastries that Cretans seem to treat as daily bread. I ate two at a plastic table outside a shop that also sold mobile phone cases and religious icons, which felt like a decent summary of modern Greece.

Arriving at the Melampes proper, I was struck by how the place managed to be both compact and generous. The terrace looked down towards Agia Galini's harbour, not dramatically but suggestively, like a promise of dinner to come. The kitchen, I noted with relief, was properly equipped, not one of those holiday let set-ups where you're meant to subsist on toast and resentment. There was even a small charcoal grill outside, which I immediately decided I would master despite having last barbecued in 2019 with results that still haunt my brother-in-law.

My first evening was all about reconnaissance. I walked down to the harbour, maybe fifteen minutes at a stroll, past houses with lemon trees spilling over walls and the occasional cat conducting important business in a doorway. The waterfront was doing that magical Mediterranean thing where the restaurants set out their tables just as the light turns golden and everyone suddenly looks like they're in a film. I chose a taverna called something unpronounceable and ate grilled octopus that had the proper chew, not the rubber-band disaster you get in lesser places, followed by lamb cooked with stamnagathi, one of those Cretan greens that tastes like spinach that went to university.

The wine was local, from the nearby village of Plakias direction, though I didn't venture that far. A heavy red that made the walk back up to the villa feel longer than it was, and I may have stopped to introduce myself to a goat who was entirely unimpressed.

The next morning I attempted the Rethymno market, which was perhaps ambitious given my wine consumption. The drive took me through villages where every other building seemed to sell honey or raki or both, often from the same doorway. The market itself was a proper working affair, not purely tourist-facing, with old women selling bundles of horta, wild greens, and slabs of myzithra cheese that looked like they'd been made that morning, which they probably had. I bought too much, as one does, including some tiny tomatoes that smelled like actual tomatoes, a concept British supermarkets have largely abandoned.

Back at the Melampes, I attempted a Cretan salad with the local graviera cheese, which I crumbled with more enthusiasm than precision. The kitchen had decent knives, which matters more than people admit. I sat on that terrace with my modest creation, watching the harbour lights come on below, and felt briefly competent. The goat may have judged me from afar, but I chose not to look.

The pubs and bars of Agia Galini proper turned out to be unpretentious affairs, mostly family-run, where the measure of a good evening seemed to be whether you'd ended up drinking raki with the owner. I achieved this on my third night, at a place near the small beach where the fishing boats pull up. The raki was harsh and then strangely smooth, and the owner produced olives from his own trees, which he described with the intensity usually reserved for describing children. I believed him. They were excellent olives.

I cooked again the following evening, having purchased some fresh fish from a harbour-side seller who spoke approximately six words of English and communicated freshness by thumping the fish and raising his eyebrows. It worked. I grilled it simply, with lemon and oregano from a pot I'd found on the terrace, feeling absurdly pleased with myself. The villa's outdoor space made this feel like an event rather than mere sustenance, the charcoal scent mixing with jasmine from somewhere nearby.

By my final morning, I'd established a routine of walking down for bakery bread still warm, eating it with honey from a market purchase, planning lunch with the seriousness of a military operation. The mishap of the first day felt like it belonged to another person, someone less settled, less willing to be confused by a place and come out the other side eating better for it.

I left the Melampes with a bag of kalitsounia for the road, a small jar of that honey, and the certain knowledge that I'd return. Probably to the right villa this time, though one can never be entirely sure where bougainvillea is concerned.