I have never been brilliant with directions, which is how I found myself circling the same roundabout near Lignano Sabbiadoro three times, arguing with a sat nav that had apparently developed an emotional attachment to a petrol station. It was late May, that awkward in-between season where Italy cannot quite decide if it is spring or summer, and I had packed for both possibilities in a suitcase that now refused to close properly.

The journey from Trieste Airport had been straightforward enough until the final stretch, when my rental car and I developed a mutual misunderstanding about which turning meant "beachside flat" and which meant "agricultural supply depot." The mishap became properly funny when I finally stopped to ask for help, only to realise I had been fifty metres from the property the entire time. A kind woman walking her dog pointed literally around the corner with the patient expression of someone who had done this before.

Arriving at the flat in late May meant the place still carried the quietness of the shoulder season. The building sat in that dense, pine-scented pocket of Lignano Sabbiadoro where the roads narrow and the sand seems to drift into every crack. I stepped out of the car into air that was warm but not yet heavy, the kind of temperature that makes you overconfident about sunscreen. The pines were everywhere, dropping their needles in that lazy way they do when the season is turning, and the light had that particular golden quality that comes before the harsh white of full summer.

The flat itself felt suspended between states, much like the month. The shutters had been opened for my arrival, and inside smelled of clean linen and something faintly resinous from the surrounding trees. I flung open the balcony doors expecting the full heat of Italy, but instead got a breeze that made me reach for a jumper I had optimistically buried at the bottom of my bag. This was May in Friuli, I reminded myself, not August. The Adriatic was visible from the balcony, still that slightly muted turquoise it becomes before the summer sun burns it brighter, and the beach below had only scattered figures rather than the packed rows of high season.

My first evening was shaped entirely by this seasonal uncertainty. I walked to the nearby shops expecting the full bustle of Italian coastal life, but found many places still on their pre-season schedule, opening hours tentative and optimistic. I bought bread and cheese from a small alimentari where the owner seemed pleasantly surprised to have custom, and ate on the balcony wrapped in a cardigan, watching the sky turn that particular soft pink that belongs to late spring rather than the dramatic oranges of midsummer.

The morning brought mist, which I had not anticipated. It rolled in from the sea and transformed the pines into something almost theatrical, and I stood on the beach in trousers rather than the swimming costume I had optimistically laid out. A few dog walkers nodded at me with the camaraderie of people who know this weather, who understand that May here is a negotiation rather than a guarantee.

By midday the sun had burned through, and I experienced that peculiar rapid-season-change that defines this time of year. The flat became warm, then almost too warm, and I opened every window to create cross-draughts. The afternoon demanded gelato, which I ate on the seafront watching the first proper weekend crowds arrive, the seasonal machinery slowly cranking into gear.

What struck me most was how this in-between time made me more attentive. I was not lulled into the lazy rhythms of full summer, but instead kept alert by the shifting light, the unexpected chill, the sudden warmth. The flat felt like a vantage point for watching a place wake up, stretch, prepare itself. I found myself reflecting, somewhat cheesily I admit, on how I rarely allow myself these transitional moments in ordinary life, how I rush from one fixed state to another without noticing the interesting awkwardness in between.

The mishap of my arrival, the seasonal uncertainty, the packing mistakes all became part of the same gentle lesson in paying attention to where you actually are rather than where you expected to be. I watched the mist roll in again that second evening, wrapped myself in the available blanket, and felt genuinely content with the particular imperfect timing of late May in Lignano Sabbiadoro.