I have never been so relieved to see a washing line in my entire life. There it was, strung between two olive trees at our villa in Lazarata, Lefkada, flapping with someone else's forgotten tea towels and a rather optimistic pair of men's swimming trunks. The relief was not, I should clarify, due to any particular enthusiasm for laundry. It was because those sad, abandoned garments proved we had actually arrived at the right place after what I can only describe as a journey of spectacular incompetence.

The mishap began at Preveza Airport, which is basically a lovely little building with a carousel and a man who hands you keys if you have booked a hire car. We had indeed booked a hire car. What we had not done, in our smug pre-holiday efficiency, was check which of the seventeen identical silver Fiats in the car park was actually ours. I spent twenty minutes trying to unlock someone else's vehicle before the actual owner appeared, carrying a toddler and the unmistakable expression of a man who has just watched an idiot attempt to steal his family saloon in broad daylight. My wife found this hilarious until she realised our actual car was three rows away, hidden behind a shrub, and she had been filming the wrong vehicle for her "arriving in Greece" Instagram story.

The drive to Lazarata should take about forty minutes. Ours took ninety, partly because Greek road signs operate on a need-to-know basis and partly because I refused to admit my phone was routing us through what appeared to be someone's private vineyard. We arrived at the villa as the sun was doing that golden, cinematic thing it does in the Ionian Islands, which would have been romantic had I not been sweating through my shirt and muttering about agricultural access roads.

But then we stepped out of the car, and the whole nonsense of the journey simply stopped mattering. The villa sat among terraced gardens with those silvery-green olive trees everywhere, their leaves making that particular shushing sound in the warm breeze. The pool glimmered with that almost unbelievable turquoise you get in this part of Greece, where the sea and the sky seem to have made a pact about colour coordination. Somewhere in the distance, a goat had opinions about something, which is basically the ambient soundtrack of rural Lefkada.

Inside, the place had that lovely, slightly chaotic feel of a proper family holiday let rather than a sterile hotel. The kitchen was equipped with approximately forty-seven mismatching mugs, three of which had cheerful dolphins on them that looked like they had been painted by someone who had only ever seen a dolphin described to them over a bad phone line. The sitting room opened onto a terrace with a barbecue that had clearly witnessed some emotional cooking moments in its time. My children immediately claimed bedrooms with the tactical precision of siblings who have spent years negotiating territory, while I stood on the terrace with a warm beer from the admittedly temperamental fridge and felt something in my shoulders actually release.

That first evening, we walked the ten minutes into Lazarata village itself, which is basically one winding street with a couple of tavernas where old men play backgammon and pretend not to notice tourists. We ate grilled sardines and tomatoes that tasted like actual tomatoes, which my children treated with the suspicion they reserve for all unfamiliar vegetables. The owner of the taverna brought us complimentary watermelon and asked about our journey in the particular way Greeks have of making small talk feel like genuine human connection rather than polite obligation. I did not mention the car park incident. Some things are between a man and his dignity.

Walking back in the dark, the cicadas were going absolutely berserk in the olive groves and the village cats followed us with the entitled confidence of animals who know they own the place. The pool lights were on at the villa, making the water glow invitingly, and my daughter was already lobbying for a pre-bedtime swim with the relentless energy of the overtired.

I sat on the terrace later, listening to my family arguing gently about shower rota inside, and watched the stars come out in that overwhelming, unsophisticated way they do when you are away from streetlights. The forgotten swimming trunks still hung on the washing line, faintly ridiculous in the moonlight. I decided to leave them there as a sort of tribute to whoever had enjoyed this place before us, and to the small, silly chaos of arrival that makes actually being somewhere feel earned rather than merely arrived at.