I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a small disaster, and my recent trip to Liguria did not disappoint. We had booked a lovely looking place in Imperia, one of those proper Italian towns that still feels like somewhere people actually live rather than just pose for photographs. The journey from Genoa started well enough, winding along the coast with the Mediterranean winking at us through gaps in the railway carriages. Then I made the fatal error of relying on my phone's GPS once we left the station.

"Turn left," it commanded, so I turned left. "Continue for two hundred metres," it said, so I continued. What it failed to mention was that two hundred metres would take us straight up a set of stone steps that looked older than most European nations. There we were, dragging suitcases behind us like stubborn pets, clattering and banging through what turned out to be a residential alley where elderly Italians peered from windows with the resigned expressions of people who have seen this exact scene a thousand times before. My partner gave me that look. You know the one. The "we will discuss this later over wine" look.

By the time we found the property, somewhere near the top of what felt like a small mountain, I had developed a profound respect for the luggage wheels that had survived the ordeal. The owner, a cheerful woman called Luisa, opened the gate and immediately understood everything. She did not laugh, which I appreciated, though her eyes crinkled in a way that suggested she was storing the memory for later amusement.

"You took the scenic route," she said, which is Italian for "you are an idiot but I am too polite to say so."

The place itself was worth every battered wheel and bruised shin. A terrace that looked down over terracotta roofs toward the sea, lemon trees in terracotta pots, that particular quality of Ligurian light that makes everything appear slightly golden even when the sky is overcast. I stood there catching my breath, partly from the climb and partly from the view, and felt that particular shift that happens when a holiday truly begins. The stress of the journey does not disappear exactly, but it transforms into something you can laugh about rather than curse.

Luisa pointed out a path behind the property that she said led down to the old town through gardens and past a chapel that most tourists never found. "Get lost," she advised, with what I initially thought was commentary on my navigation skills but later realised was genuine recommendation. "The best places here, you find by accident."

She was not wrong. That first evening, still slightly disorientated from travel and the climb, we wandered without purpose through narrow streets that seemed to fold back on themselves like origami. We found a bakery where an old man sold focaccia so fresh it steamed when he cut it, and a tiny square with a fountain where children played football against a wall painted with a faded mural of the Madonna. No guidebook had mentioned either. They were simply there, waiting for whoever happened to pass.

I think there is something particular about arriving somewhere unfamiliar, slightly flustered, slightly ridiculous, that opens you to experience in a way that smooth efficiency never could. If our taxi had deposited us at the door, if our journey had been seamless, I wonder whether I would have noticed the baker's flour-dusted apron, or the way the evening light caught the water in that hidden fountain. Probably not. I would have been too busy being competent, too focused on the next planned thing.

Instead I stood on a terrace in Imperia, slightly sunburned, slightly lost, eating warm focaccia and watching the sea darken toward evening, feeling profoundly grateful for my own ineptitude. Sometimes the wrong turn is exactly the right one.