I have never been particularly gifted at reading maps, which is how I found myself reversing a hire car down a single-track lane in Liguria while a very patient Italian gentleman gestured that I had, once again, missed the turning. My wife was doing that particular breathing technique she learned at antenatal classes, and our two children had gone suspiciously quiet in the back, which is never a good sign.

The satnav had given up on us somewhere near Sestri Levante, declaring in a huff that we had reached our destination while we were clearly parked outside someone's olive grove. A helpful local on a scooter eventually led us the final kilometre, and I tried to look dignified as we crawled along behind him at walking pace, our luggage visible through the rear window like a minor emigration.

The Testana sits among terraced hills that roll down toward the Ligurian coast, and my first thought on finally arriving was that I would forgive absolutely anyone for anything if this was where they lived. The stone building looks like it has grown out of the hillside rather than been placed upon it, all weathered walls and terracotta roof tiles that have faded to the colour of old bricks. My daughter announced it looked like somewhere a fairy might live, and my son said it looked like somewhere with no Wi-Fi, which turned out to be half correct.

The key was in a lockbox, and I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to open it before realising I had been turning the combination the wrong way. This set the tone for the week, really. The door opened with a satisfying heaviness, the kind of weight that suggests serious craftsmanship and possibly a medieval blacksmith. Inside, the cool struck me immediately, that wonderful stone-house cool that makes you forget the thirty-degree heat outside.

The kitchen had terracotta floors and wooden beams that my wife kept touching as if checking they were real. I kept waiting for some catch, some disappointment, but the more I looked, the more I liked. The sitting area had proper worn-in furniture, not the hotel-lobby stuff that looks at you accusingly if you put your feet up. French doors opened onto a terrace where a pergola draped with vines created dappled shade over a table that could easily seat eight.

I made the mistake of looking at the view before unpacking. Big error. The children had already found the pool, which sits on a lower terrace surrounded by rosemary and lavender that released its scent whenever anyone brushed past. The hills fell away toward the sea, which was visible as a thin blue line between greener folds of land. I stood there with a carrier bag of toiletries in each hand, caught between responsibility and the overwhelming urge to do absolutely nothing.

My wife appeared beside me, still holding the map she had been navigating with, now folded in a way that suggested permanent defeat. "We got here," she said, which was her way of acknowledging that my wrong turns had somehow produced a right result. I decided not to mention that I had been aiming for a different village entirely.

By evening, we had established our pattern. The children took the twin bedroom with its sloped ceiling and small window that frames a slice of hillside like a painting. We took the main bedroom with its heavier furniture and the sense that generations of families had slept well there. I cooked pasta with pesto, because Liguria demands it and because the local shop sold basil that actually tasted of something, and we ate on the terrace as the light changed from gold to grey to a soft darkness punctuated by the occasional distant light from another farmhouse.

Someone, probably me, had forgotten to buy proper coffee for the morning. I made a mental note to walk to the village in the morning, a walk that turned out to be steeper than anticipated and entirely worth it for the bar where an elderly man made me a cappuccino without a word of English and I managed to order a second one through a combination of pointing and hopeful smiling.

That was the Testana, really. Not grand, not polished to tourist perfection, but comfortable in its own skin in a way that let us relax into ours. I stopped checking my phone. The children stopped asking about television. My wife stopped doing her breathing technique. We had arrived, eventually, and that was what mattered.