I have never been so relieved to see a set of shutters in my life. After twelve hours of travel that involved a delayed flight to Bologna, a train that smelled faintly of anchovies, and a taxi driver who treated the coastal road like his own personal Grand Prix, I finally stood outside our holiday let in Rimini clutching a suitcase with a wonky wheel and a carrier bag containing the remains of a panini that had not survived the journey intact.

The mishap, because there is always one with me, happened at Bologna Centrale. In my eagerness to board the correct train, I managed to wedge my rucksack in the automatic doors. There followed an agonising thirty seconds where the doors opened, closed, opened again, and made a noise like a robot having a minor breakdown. An entire carriage of Italians watched this unfold. A man in a very good suit offered to help by standing very still and looking concerned. I wrenched the bag free, tumbled onto the train, and spent the next hour and a half staring out at the flat green fields of Emilia-Romagna wondering if I had left my dignity on the platform.

So by the time I reached Rimini, my standards for joy were not high. Give me a horizontal surface and a functioning toilet and I would have wept with gratitude.

The property sits in a quiet residential pocket not far from the lungomare, close enough to hear the sea if you concentrate but tucked away from the main tourist drag. I fumbled with the key safe, which is always a test of character, and finally pushed open the door into cool tiled floors and that particular hush of an Italian apartment in late afternoon. The shutters were half-closed against the heat, throwing striped shadows across the living space. I stood there for a moment, still holding the ruined panini, and felt something in my shoulders drop.

The place had that lived-in practicality you want in a coastal let rather than the sterile gloss of somewhere trying too hard. A small kitchen with the essentials, a balcony that looked down onto a street where an elderly woman was already observing my arrival with the frank curiosity I have come to expect and rather love in these parts. I gave her a wave. She did not wave back, but she did not look away either, which I took as progress.

I dumped the case, opened the balcony doors properly, and the smell hit me. Not the anchovies this time, but something saltier and greener, the particular perfume of the Adriatic that reaches you in bursts when the wind turns. Somewhere in the distance a scooter coughed into life. The woman downstairs had been joined by a small dog with opinions.

I had intended to unpack properly, to establish order, to be a person who arrives somewhere and immediately sets about domestic organisation. Instead I found a plastic chair on the balcony, sat down with a warm fizzy drink from the corner shop I had spotted on the way in, and watched the light change. The panini disaster seemed less significant. The train doors felt like a story I might tell properly one day rather than a fresh humiliation.

The beach could wait. The promenade could wait. Even dinner, though my stomach had begun making pointed remarks, could wait. For perhaps an hour I simply sat there in the striped shadows, listening to scooters and distant waves and the small dog's continued commentary on the state of the neighbourhood, and thought that sometimes the best part of a journey is the exact moment you stop moving.