I have never been so happy to see a pine tree in all my life. There I was, sat on the hard shoulder of the A13 just outside Ferrara, watching our hire car gently steam like a forgotten kettle, while my other half waved a map at me that was definitely not the right map. "I thought you said you downloaded the directions," I said, which in hindsight was not helpful. He had. The problem was he'd downloaded directions to Lido di Classe, which is a solid forty minutes in the wrong direction and, I later learned, has entirely different pine trees.

Three hours, one very patient mechanic, and a gelato emergency stop later, we finally rolled into Lido di Spina. The car park was sandy. Not gravel that looks sandy, actually sandy, with little dunes forming against the wheel arches of the cars already there. I kicked off my shoes right there and then, and something in my shoulders dropped about three inches.

The place itself was exactly the sort of low-rise, terracotta-roofed affair that makes you feel like you've wandered into a 1970s Italian film, the kind where everyone is permanently slightly sunburnt and eating melon. Our apartment had a balcony that looked directly into a pine wood so dense and fragrant that I spent the first ten minutes just standing there, breathing like I'd invented lungs. The furniture was simple, the kitchen was small enough that two people couldn't pass each other without choreography, and the ceiling fan turned with the lazy confidence of something that had absolutely nowhere else to be.

I loved it immediately.

The next morning I understood what this place was actually for. I woke at half past eight, which for me on holiday is practically the middle of the night, and found my partner already on the balcony with coffee and a book he wasn't reading because he'd fallen asleep in the chair. The light came through the pines in stripes. Somewhere nearby, a woman was calling for a child named Matteo in that particular Italian way that makes even mild frustration sound operatic. I made more coffee, burned it slightly because the hob had ideas of its own, and carried my mug down to the little pool area.

Here's the thing about Lido di Spina. Nobody rushes. The pool had perhaps six people around it at eleven in the morning, and the loudest noise was a man turning the page of his newspaper with the kind of deliberation that suggested it was the only task he intended to complete that day. I joined him in spirit. I had brought three books and finished none of them, which I consider a perfect batting average. I read the same paragraph of a novel four times, looked up at a cloud that wasn't moving, and felt genuinely proud of myself for this achievement.

We did venture out, of course, but never far and never with purpose. The beach is a short wander through those same pines, and the Adriatic rolls in with all the drama of a very large, very warm bath. I paddled for twenty minutes, got sandy feet, and declared it an expedition. The little centre of Lido di Spina has enough for gentle amusement: a supermarket where we bought peaches that actually tasted of something, a couple of bars where the coffee comes with a small biscuit whether you ask or not, and a cycle path that we talked about using every single day and never did.

One evening, walking back from an early dinner of grilled fish that I couldn't name and didn't need to, I caught myself doing that thing I always promise I won't do on holiday. I was planning. Mentally listing things we should do tomorrow, places we should see, experiences we should accumulate. Then I stepped on a pine cone, swore in a way that made an old lady laugh, and looked up to see the sky doing that particular pink-orange thing it does before a warm evening. My other half was carrying the leftover bread in a paper bag. We had no plans. We had no need of plans.

I think that was the moment I properly arrived, car trouble and wrong directions and all. Lido di Spina doesn't demand your ambition. It offers shade, warm water, the smell of resin, and the radical possibility that doing almost nothing might be doing exactly enough.