I have never been so grateful for a sat nav's patronising tone as I was driving into Recco last summer. "In five hundred metres, your destination will be on the right," it announced, just as I confidently turned left into what I can only describe as a vegetable garden belonging to an extremely surprised nonno. Three tomatoes and one mortified Englishman later, I found the actual entrance to our holiday let, tucked up a narrow vicolo that my Fiat 500 barely cleared by folding in its wing mirrors and holding its breath.

The property itself sat perched above the town like a watchful nonna, all pastel walls and terracotta roof tiles that had clearly seen better decades. My partner was still laughing at my agricultural detour when a woman appeared from next door, wiping floury hands on an apron and squinting at us with magnificent suspicion. This was Antonella, who within ninety seconds had established that we were English, unmarried, and apparently in desperate need of her focaccia recipe. She delivered this verdict through a window without actually inviting us in, which I found both efficient and slightly thrilling.

The flat smelled of lemons and old plaster, which is exactly how I imagine all sensible Ligurian properties ought to smell. I immediately opened every shutter to discover that our balcony overlooked not the promised sea view but rather the back of a trattoria kitchen, where a man named Beppe spent the entire afternoon singing Puccini at a fish delivery. He caught me watching and raised a squid in salute. I raised my coffee cup in return. We understood each other perfectly.

By evening, the mishap with the vegetable garden had achieved legendary status among the neighbours. A boy of perhaps twelve appeared at our door with a paper bag containing replacement tomatoes and a handwritten note from his grandfather stating that my driving was "like a goat with three legs" but my apology face had been acceptable. I kept that note. It is currently framed in our downstairs loo, where it confuses visitors wonderfully.

We ventured out for dinner and immediately failed. The first trattoria had no menu, just a waiter named Franco who asked what we felt like emotionally and then brought us whatever matched. I said "hopeful," which apparently translates to anchovies. My partner said "confused," which got her a bowl of trofie pesto the size of her head. Franco hovered throughout, correcting my pronunciation of "Recco" with increasingly theatrical despair until I sounded less like a sneeze and more like a local. He declared this his greatest achievement since 1987, though he refused to elaborate on what happened then.

Walking back up the hill in darkness, we passed Antonella's window again. She was still there, now accompanied by two other women of similarly formidable bearing, all three watching our approach with the satisfaction of people who had correctly predicted our return. "You ate too much," Antonella observed through the glass. It was not a question. She then produced a limoncello from somewhere, passed it through the window with three glasses, and proceeded to interrogate us about British plumbing for forty-five minutes. Her friend Carla had visited Hemel Hempstead in 1994 and had never recovered. We heard the entire story. Twice.

That first night, lying in bed with the window open to Beppe's final aria and the distant clatter of the last restaurant clearing, I realised something rather embarrassing. I had spent months planning this trip around walks and boat trips and all the sensible things one ought to do on the Italian Riviera. Yet here I was, genuinely delighted by a woman who had fed us liqueur through a window and a man who sang to squid. The mishap with the tomatoes had forced me to arrive properly, to be seen and judged and subsequently adopted by people who had no obligation to care whether I enjoyed myself.

I had come for the sea and the scenery, which were perfectly lovely when I eventually noticed them. But I stayed, in that first evening and the days that followed, for Antonella's abrupt kindness, for Franco's theatrical despair, for Beppe's squid salute. The Riviera di Levante will give you breathtaking views if you insist upon them. But the locals, with their floury hands and their limoncello and their absolute certainty that you need looking after, are what actually stay with you. I still cannot pronounce Recco correctly. Antonella sends voice notes correcting me weekly. I would not have it any other way.