I have never been brilliant with directions, which is how I found myself reversing down a narrow lane in Pizzo, Calabria, while a man on a Vespa gestured with the kind of expressive hand movements that needed no translation. My partner sat beside me, map on her phone spinning uselessly, both of us laughing in that slightly hysterical way you do when you realise you have definitely taken the wrong turning somewhere around Lamezia Terme airport.

The mishap, though, came slightly later. Having finally located our holiday home - a charming stone property with terracotta roof tiles and shutters that looked like they had weathered several decades of Italian summers - I promptly tripped over the single step at the entrance and sent my rucksack flying across the tiled floor. My bottle of duty-free limoncello, purchased with such optimism barely an hour before, shattered in spectacular fashion. The smell was extraordinary. The owner, who had been waiting to welcome us, simply raised an eyebrow and said something in rapid Calabrian dialect that I chose to interpret as sympathetic.

First impressions of the house itself were rather wonderful, once I had stopped apologising and mopping up sticky alcohol. The rooms were cool and cavernous, with thick walls that clearly knew a thing or two about keeping out the August heat. A kitchen that looked like someone's grandmother had recently stepped out - copper pans, slightly mismatched crockery, that particular smell of dried oregano and old stone. I ran my hand along the wooden table and immediately imagined evenings spent there with wine and whatever we could cobble together from the local shops.

The terrace was what sold us on the place, naturally. It overlooked a tangle of rooftops descending towards the sea, which glittered in the distance like someone had scattered foil across the horizon. A clothes line sagged between two posts, someone else's washing still fluttering from the previous guests. I found this oddly comforting, as though the house had not been staged for our arrival but had simply paused in its ordinary business to let us in.

My partner discovered the outdoor shower first, a basic arrangement of tiles and a shower head that looked directly up at the sky. She turned it on and yelped at the cold water, then stood there anyway, grinning like a child. I joined her, still slightly sticky from the limoncello incident, and we stood shivering and ridiculous in our clothes, watching the late afternoon light turn everything golden.

That evening we walked down to Pizzo proper, following the scent of frying fish and the sound of voices echoing off medieval walls. The town clings to its cliff with admirable stubbornness, all narrow passages and sudden glimpses of the Tyrrhenian Sea. We ate tartufo at a gelateria near the castle, because apparently that is where tartufo was invented, and I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to photograph mine before it melted into a puddle of chocolate and regret.

Walking back up to the house in darkness, slightly lost again if I am honest, I realised how quiet it was away from the centro storico. Crickets, distant dogs, the occasional scooter. My partner slipped her hand into mine and I thought about how I had broken a bottle, taken wrong turnings, and still ended up somewhere that felt immediately like a place I wanted to return to. Some arrivals are messy, I decided, and that is rather the point of them.