I have never been so relieved to see a sign for Lamon in all my life, and that includes the time I accidentally drove into a roundabout twice in Milton Keynes. The journey from Venice Marco Polo had been straightforward enough until I decided my phone knew better than the sat nav, which is how I ended up on a road so narrow that a marmot could have blocked it. Forty minutes of reversing past startled cyclists and one very unimpressed farmer later, I finally spotted the turning for our holiday home.

The property sits in the Belluno province, tucked into the Dolomites proper, and my first thought on pulling up was that I had definitely brought the wrong shoes. The cottage-style place looked exactly as it did in the photos, all wooden balconies and flower boxes that someone had actually bothered to maintain, which is more than I can say for my own window boxes back in Leeds. My partner gave me that look, the one that means "you got us lost but I will not mention it until the drive home."

The key was in the lockbox as promised, though I spent a solid five minutes trying the code backwards, forwards, and with various creative interpretations before realising I had been holding the instruction sheet upside down. Inside, the place smelled of pine and something faintly lemony, which I later discovered was the cleaning product rather than any deliberate air freshener choice. The living area had one of those wood-burning stoves that looks romantic in photographs and slightly terrifying in reality, plus a kitchen corner with enough pots to suggest someone once attempted actual cooking here.

I made straight for the balcony, because that is what you do, isn't it? The view stopped me properly. You do not get mountains like this in Yorkshire. The slopes rose directly behind the property, green and then suddenly not-green where the rock took over, and somewhere up there were the proper dramatic peaks that the Dolomites are famous for. A buzzard circled. I stood there with my tea going cold, feeling that particular combination of small and grateful that mountains always produce in me.

The children had already found the bedrooms and established a hierarchy based on who got the bunk beds, which apparently represent the pinnacle of sleeping arrangements despite being objectively the least comfortable option. I unpacked the shopping we had grabbed in Feltre, mostly pasta and things in jars with labels I could not read, plus a bottle of local wine that cost less than a coffee at home and tasted significantly better.

By evening, the mishap of the journey had faded into something almost fond, the way these things do once you are safely arrived and the stove is actually lit without setting off any alarms. We ate on that balcony as the light went, watching the mountains turn that particular pinkish colour they do at sunset, the famous alpenglow that makes everyone reach for their phone camera and then give up because it never captures it properly.

I found myself thinking about how rarely I do this, just sit and look at something without any particular purpose. The drive had been stressful, the wrong turn entirely my fault, the key box a humbling experience. But here we were, slightly chilly, slightly full, slightly overwhelmed by the scale of everything around us. That is the thing about a cottage holiday, I suppose. The place itself is simple enough, comfortable without being fancy, but it puts you somewhere that makes you feel differently about your own small concerns.

Tomorrow we would attempt a walk, probably get lost again, definitely argue about directions. For now, I was happy to sit there with my feet up, listening to my children bicker gently about whose turn it was to choose the music, and watching the last light fade from those impossible slopes.