I have never been so pleased to see a washing machine in my entire life. After twelve hours of travel involving a delayed flight to Venice, a train that apparently only runs on Tuesdays and alternate weekends, and a hire car with a sat nav that developed what I can only describe as an existential crisis somewhere around Pordenone, I finally pulled up outside the villa in Udine. I stepped out, stretched my legs, and promptly dropped my entire coffee down the front of my only clean shirt. There I stood, in the late afternoon sun of Friuli, looking like I had lost a fight with a cappuccino machine.

The property itself, a traditional stone house with a proper tiled roof and wooden shutters, looked impossibly peaceful. I must have cut quite the figure shuffling up the gravel path, clutching my suitcase with one hand and trying to blot myself with a motorway service station napkin with the other. The owner, a lovely woman called Luisa, opened the door and immediately pretended not to notice my state. She simply handed me a fresh towel and said, "The machine is just there, through the kitchen." I could have hugged her.

Stepping inside for the first time, the cool air hit me like a welcome drink. The house had that particular stillness you only find in old Italian buildings, where the thick walls seem to hold their breath. The kitchen opened straight onto a covered terrace, and beyond that I could see the garden sloping down towards nothing in particular, just fields and the distant suggestion of hills. Luisa showed me the basics, the coffee maker, the slightly temperamental hob, the outdoor grill that she said I was absolutely welcome to use if I enjoyed "a little challenge with fire." I chose to believe she was joking.

What struck me most, once I had stopped dripping and started actually looking around, was how immediately the place felt settled into its own rhythm. There was no rush, no sense that I needed to dash out and start ticking off sights. The sitting room had books in three languages and furniture that looked as though it had been chosen over decades rather than ordered from a catalogue. I found myself just standing at the window, watching the light change on the terrace stones, still half in my travel stupor.

I had planned to head into Udine proper that first evening, to find a proper restaurant and begin my holiday properly. Instead, I discovered the small covered market in the town centre had already closed, and that my attempt to buy bread at a bakery resulted in me accidentally ordering six custard tarts because I panicked at the counter and pointed at the wrong thing. I ate two of them on a bench near Piazza della Liberta, watching locals stroll past in that unhurried way that always makes me feel like I am doing life slightly too quickly.

Back at the villa, as the washing machine hummed its reassuring tune and the last light faded over the garden, I realised something. I had spent months planning this trip, researching restaurants and day trips and the best routes to take. Yet my most vivid memory of the first day would be standing in a stranger's kitchen, coffee-soaked and ridiculous, being handed a towel with such uncomplicated kindness. The mishap had become the story. The wrong turn on the motorway, the sat nav's meltdown, the custard tarts I never meant to buy, they had already shaped the holiday into something more mine than any itinerary could have managed.

I fell asleep that night to the sound of nothing much at all, already wondering what small disaster tomorrow might bring, and rather hoping it would.