I have never been particularly gifted at reading maps, which is how I found myself reversing a hire car down a narrow lane in Recco while a man on a Vespa gestured with the kind of dramatic flair usually reserved for opera. The satnav had confidently announced we had arrived at our holiday let, but the only thing in front of us was a solid stone wall and what appeared to be someone's chicken coop. My partner sat in the passenger seat wearing an expression I have learned to interpret as long-suffering affection.

Twenty minutes, one panicked phone call, and a helpful local with a cigarette permanently attached to his lower lip later, we found the actual property. It sat tucked into the hillside with terracotta pots spilling geraniums and a view of the Ligurian Sea that made every wrong turn worth the humiliation. I stepped out of the car and immediately felt the particular weight of sunshine that seems to exist only in this corner of Italy, heavy and golden and utterly indifferent to whatever schedule you might have imagined keeping.

The first morning, I woke without an alarm for the first time in months. The apartment had wooden shutters that creaked pleasantly when opened, and I stood on the small balcony with a cup of coffee that tasted better than anything I make at home, watching fishing boats drift across the bay like they had nowhere particular to be. I decided to adopt their philosophy.

Recco itself does not demand much of you, which is precisely its charm. The beach is pebbled rather than sandy, so there is none of that tedious business of finding sand in your belongings for weeks afterwards. I spent hours there doing absolutely nothing of consequence, moving only to reposition my chair as the sun shifted across the sky. The water is that impossible turquoise that photographs never quite capture, and I waded in occasionally more for the pleasure of drying off than for any real exercise.

Lunch became a sacred ritual. The town is famous for its focaccia, specifically the cheese-stuffed variety called focaccia al formaggio, which I ate daily with the religious devotion of a convert. There is a small bakery near the seafront where the woman behind the counter began recognising me by the third day, though whether with fondness or pity I could not say. I chose to believe fondness.

My greatest ambition each afternoon was selecting which book to read. I had brought three and acquired a fourth from a shelf in the apartment, a murder mystery with water-damaged pages that smelled faintly of basil. I read it on the balcony, on the beach, in a small piazza where elderly men played cards with the intensity of high-stakes poker. No one hurried me along. No one seemed to find it odd that I might sit for two hours with a single espresso.

There was a moment, perhaps on the fourth day, when I noticed how thoroughly my shoulders had dropped from their usual position somewhere near my ears. I had not planned any excursions to speak of, had not ticked off sights or accumulated photographs for future boasting. I had simply existed in the warmth, eaten bread and tomatoes, swum when the mood took me, and allowed time to move at the pace it clearly preferred all along.

The chicken coop mishap on arrival now feels like appropriate preparation. Some places require you to abandon your sense of direction entirely, to get gloriously lost in the act of doing very little at all.