I have never been so relieved to see a stone wall in my life. After a flight that involved a toddler, a dropped ice cream, and an argument about whose turn it was to hold the passports, we finally reached Kokkino Chorio. The satnav had given up somewhere near Vamos, leaving us navigating by instinct and my wife's increasingly creative interpretations of a printed map. We took a wrong turn, ended up in someone's olive grove, and had to reverse past three goats who looked deeply unimpressed by our driving.

The villa sat perched on a hillside, all whitewashed walls and terracotta roof tiles, looking out towards Souda Bay. My first thought, embarrassingly, was that it looked exactly like the photos. I know that sounds daft, but after years of holiday letdowns, I have learned to manage expectations. This place, though. The pool glinted in the afternoon sun, surrounded by those spiky plants that I later learned were some type of local agave. The children were out of the car before I had even turned off the engine, already arguing about who got the bigger bedroom.

I should mention the suitcase incident. In my enthusiasm to unpack, I managed to drop my wife's case down the stone steps leading to the entrance. It burst open in spectacular fashion, scattering sandals and sun cream across the courtyard. A neighbour's cat appeared from nowhere and made off with a hair tie. I stood there, surrounded by my family's possessions, wondering how I had managed to turn a simple arrival into a small-scale disaster. My wife just laughed, which was either a good sign or meant she was too tired to shout. The kids thought it was the funniest thing they had seen all day.

The villa itself had that lovely lived-in feel, not too polished or precious. The kitchen opened straight onto a terrace where we would spend most evenings, grilling whatever we had picked up from the local shops. I am not much of a cook, but there is something about holiday kitchens that makes even my basic efforts seem acceptable. The first night, I managed to produce a meal of bread, tomatoes, and cheese that tasted like absolute heaven. Perhaps it was the view, perhaps it was the local wine, perhaps it was simply that nobody had to cook properly for once.

What struck me most about Kokkino Chorio was how quickly the world shrank to what mattered. The village itself is tiny, just a handful of houses and a couple of tavernas where the owner remembers your order from the night before. We walked down to the local shop for bread in the mornings, passing the same old men drinking coffee outside the kafeneio. They never seemed to move, just watched us pass with benign curiosity, probably placing bets on how lost we would get next.

The pool became our entire world for the first few days. The children invented elaborate games involving diving for stones while my wife and I took turns reading books and pretending we were not keeping one eye on them at all times. I managed to finish a novel I had started three summers ago. There is something deeply satisfying about that, about finally having the mental space to concentrate on something trivial.

By the end of our first week, the wrong turn in the olive grove had become family legend. The goats, the burst suitcase, my terrible map reading. These were the stories we would tell afterwards, not the perfect moments but the slightly chaotic ones. That is the thing about family holidays, I suppose. You plan for relaxation and end up with something messier and altogether better. The villa in Kokkino Chorio gave us the setting, but we brought the chaos ourselves, as families always do. I would not have it any other way.