I have never been so pleased to see a terracotta roof in all my life. Eight hours after leaving Manchester, two flights, one very questionable airport sandwich, and a hire car that smelled faintly of parmesan and regret, we finally pulled into Cisano di Bardolino. My partner Dave was driving, which was just as well because I had spent the last forty minutes of the journey trying to work out whether the sat nav was saying "turn left" or having some kind of electronic breakdown. Italian roads at dusk do funny things to your sense of direction.

The mishap, because there is always a mishap with us, came roughly three minutes from our destination. I had insisted on navigating the final stretch myself, waving the printed directions about like some kind of budget tour guide. "Left at the vineyard," I announced confidently. "Then straight on past the olive grove." What I failed to notice, because I was busy pointing at a very handsome cypress tree, was the tiny sign for our turning. We shot past it, carried by momentum and my misplaced enthusiasm, and found ourselves in what I can only describe as somebody's farmyard. A very patient-looking dog watched us execute a seventeen-point turn between a tractor and what I desperately hoped was a compost heap. Dave said nothing. He just made that small humming noise he does when he is choosing to be the bigger person. I hate that noise.

When we finally located the correct entrance, the sun had properly set and the lake was doing that remarkable thing where it holds onto the last bit of daylight like it is showing off. The property sat back from the water, tucked among the greenery that seems to tumble down every hillside in this corner of Lake Garda. I had worried it might feel too tucked away, too removed from the little harbour we had glimpsed earlier, but standing there with my ridiculous wheelie case and a carrier bag of duty-free, I felt something in my shoulders actually drop. The journey mishap already felt like somebody else's story.

The first thing that struck me was the quiet. Not silence exactly, because there was still the distant murmur of the lakeside road and some enthusiastic crickets holding what sounded like a very well-attended meeting. But a kind of settled, purposeful quiet that makes you realise how much noise you have been carrying around with you. The terrace was visible even in the dim light, and I could make out the shape of outdoor furniture that promised tomorrow morning's coffee with a view I had not yet earned.

Inside smelled of clean linen and that particular coolness you get in old stone buildings that have spent centuries figuring out how to handle Italian summers. I am not normally someone who notices smells, being more of a visual person, but something about that combination hit me with an unexpected wave of relief. We had done it. We were here. The farmyard dog and the parmesan-scented Fiat and my catastrophic navigation had all been worth it for this particular moment of standing in a strange kitchen and not knowing which drawer the cutlery lived in.

Dave found the wine glasses almost immediately, because he has an uncanny talent for such things, and we took our first Bardolino out onto that terrace with the sort of reverence usually reserved for religious ceremonies. The lake was properly dark now, just a vast absence of light where the mountains dipped down, and the little lights of Bardolino across the water twinkled with what I chose to interpret as welcome.

I thought about how I had nearly ruined our arrival with my overconfidence and my terrible sign-spotting ability. I do this sometimes, make things harder than they need to be, confuse enthusiasm for competence. But sitting there with my feet up and my wine down, I decided that perhaps the wrong turn had been necessary. Without it, we would not have appreciated the right one quite so much. The dog would not have had its entertainment. Dave would not have had his opportunity to hum so meaningfully.

Tomorrow we would explore properly, find the local bakery, work out where to swim, probably get lost again in some new and inventive way. But for that first evening, we simply sat and let the lake do what it has clearly been doing for thousands of years, which is to make people feel rather small and rather grateful in the very best possible way.