I have never been so relieved to see a ferry toilet in my life. There we were, my partner and I, bobbing across the Saronic Gulf towards Aegina, when I suddenly realised I had packed everything for our self-catering week except the one thing you actually need first: loo roll. The ferry shop had sold out. The vending machine was broken. I spent the final twenty minutes of the crossing doing a sort of anxious dance in my seat, convinced our holiday cottage would be equally bereft of basic civilisation.

Perdika itself announced itself gently enough. The ferry docked at Aegina Town, we collected our hire car, and within fifteen minutes we were winding down a road that grew progressively narrower and more suspicious of vehicles. The village appeared suddenly, clustered around its fishing harbour, all low white buildings and terracotta roofs and the smell of something grilled and wonderful drifting from a taverna. I relaxed. Perhaps my panic had been theatrical. Perhaps this would be seamless.

It was not seamless.

The cottage, when we found it tucked up a lane behind the harbour, was charming from the outside. Whitewashed walls, blue shutters, a terrace that promised sunset views. The key was exactly where the property notes said: under a flowerpot that contained an actual, living spider of impressive commitment. I yelped. My partner laughed. The spider held its ground. We negotiated a fragile peace and retrieved the key.

The door stuck. I mean properly stuck, requiring a shoulder and some language I had promised to use less of in 2024. When it finally yielded, I stumbled through with the momentum of a man who had expected resistance and received none. The tiled floor was mercifully cool. The living space opened onto that terrace, and through the doors I could see the sea, blue and glittering and entirely indifferent to my arrival performance.

Then I remembered the loo roll situation.

I made what I can only describe as a purposeful walk towards the bathroom, trying to maintain dignity. The cottage was simple, clean, exactly the sort of unpretentious Greek island place where you know the shower will be enthusiastic and the kitchen will have one mysterious drawer full of things nobody understands. The bathroom door handle came off in my hand. Just the handle, not the mechanism. I stood there holding it like a trophy, or perhaps evidence.

My partner, investigating a clanking noise from the kitchen, discovered that the fridge had been left on a setting best described as "Arctic." Everything inside was frozen solid, including a welcome bottle of water that had expanded dramatically and now resembled a small ice sculpture. We laughed until we cried, standing in this strange little cottage with its detached handle and its frozen offerings, the afternoon heat pressing against the shutters.

I eventually found loo roll in a cupboard. Three rolls, in fact, as if the previous guests had anticipated my particular anxiety. The fridge, once adjusted, began dripping with the rhythmic patience of a meditation app. We carried our belongings to the bedroom, where the shutters let in stripes of golden light and the bed looked genuinely inviting.

That evening, after the handle was temporarily reattached through ingenuity neither of us knew we possessed, we sat on the terrace with reconstituted wine and supermarket olives. The sun lowered itself towards the Peloponnese, turning the water shades of copper and rose. Fishing boats returned to the harbour below, their crews shouting greetings that carried clearly across the stillness. Somewhere, a goat had an opinion about something.

I thought about how arrival chaos always feels like prophecy, like the holiday itself will match the mess of those first hours. But sitting there, with my partner dozing slightly in the warmth and the first stars appearing, I understood something I keep needing to relearn. The mishaps do not define the stay. They simply provide the story you tell later, once you have settled into the rhythm of a place.

The fridge worked fine after that first day. The bathroom handle required a specific technique that became second nature. The spider, I like to think, respected our boundaries. Perdika revealed itself slowly: morning swims from the pebble beach, coffees in the harbour watching the fishermen mend nets, that particular silence of Greek afternoons when even the cats seek shade.

But those first impressions, ridiculous and human and slightly broken, they are what I remember most vividly. The cottage did not welcome us with polished perfection. It welcomed us with reality, with things to fix and adapt to and eventually laugh about. By the time we left, that stuck door opened with a familiar nudge, the terrace felt like ours, and I had developed genuine affection for the dripping fridge.

Some holidays you remember for their grandeur. Others, you remember for the moment you stood in a bathroom holding a door handle, wondering what came next.