I should have known our holiday was off to a classic start when I confidently loaded the sat nav with our Lago di Garda address and promptly drove straight past the turning for the A4. My wife gave me that look, the one that says "shall I just check my phone?" without actually saying it. Forty-five minutes of winding through industrial estates near Verona later, we finally found our rhythm, and I spent the rest of the journey pretending I had meant to take the scenic route all along.

The approach to the northern end of the lake is something else though. You come round a bend and suddenly there it is, this enormous stretch of water backed by mountains that look almost too dramatic to be real. I may have let out an actual "blimey," which delighted the kids no end. They have been storing that one up for future embarrassment purposes, I am certain.

Our place was one of those proper cottage-style holiday homes, the sort with terracotta roof tiles and shutters that actually work. I parked the car with the triumphant air of a man who has survived both my own navigation and Italian motorway driving, which is essentially a competitive sport. The key was in a lockbox, and I spent a good five minutes jabbing at the code before realising I had been holding the instructions upside down. Gentle self-reflection moment number one of the trip: perhaps I should drink less coffee and more water on travel days.

Stepping inside, the first thing that hit me was the coolness. Those thick stone walls really do their job. The second thing was the smell of clean laundry and something faintly lemony, which I later discovered was a tree in the garden that brushed against the bedroom window. The living area had that lived-in, comfortable feel, not the sterile hotel vibe that makes you afraid to touch anything. My daughter immediately claimed the sofa by the French doors, announcing she could see the lake glimmering through the trees. She was right, just about, though "glimmering" might be generous. "Winking occasionally" would be more accurate, but still, it was there, that promise of water.

The kitchen was compact but properly equipped, not one of those holiday lets where you open a drawer to find a single bent fork and a tin opener from 1973. I made us all proper coffee using the moka pot I found in the cupboard, feeling absurdly continental despite still wearing my driving shoes with the hole in the left toe. The garden was the real winner though. A covered terrace with a table big enough for actual family meals, not the balancing-act situations we have endured elsewhere. Olive trees in pots. A barbecue that looked like it had seen some action but was clean and ready. My son immediately began a campaign for evening burgers that would last approximately the entire holiday.

By late afternoon, we had unpacked with the chaotic energy of people who have been in a car too long. Swimwear was located. Towels were fought over. I made the ceremonial first trip to the local shop for essentials, which in our family means bread, cheese, and an amount of ice cream that suggests we are feeding a small army rather than four people. The shopkeeper was patient with my phrasebook Italian, though I suspect my pronunciation of "grazie" sounded more like I was sneezing than expressing gratitude.

That first evening, we sat on the terrace as the light went golden and the lake disappeared into shadow. The kids were actually quiet for once, exhausted and full of pasta. My wife and I shared a bottle of local white wine that cost less than a London coffee and tasted like summer itself. I thought about our wrong turn, my upside-down instructions, my terrible Italian. None of it mattered. We had a week of this ahead of us, simple and slow and exactly what we needed.