I have never been so grateful to see a washing machine in my entire life.

The drive from Manchester to Bergamo was smooth enough, and the hire car Fiat 500 was doing its best impression of an enthusiastic terrier up the hairpin bends above Lake Maggiore. But somewhere between Stresa and Verbania, my other half decided this was the perfect moment to open a family-sized bag of kettle chips. Within forty seconds, the entire back seat looked like a crisp factory explosion. We were still finding fragments in the seatbelt buckle three days later.

By the time we spotted the stone pillars marking Pezzoro, I had driven through approximately seven emotional stages and one very narrow village arch that I am fairly certain was designed for donkeys. The property sits just above the lake, tucked into hillside gardens with that particular Italian knack for looking completely effortless while probably requiring decades of obsessive pruning.

I will be honest, my first impression was not the view. My first impression was the gate, which had a latch that required the sort of gentle persuasion usually reserved for convincing a cat into a carrier. I wrestled with it for what felt like a performance art piece, while a neighbouring nonna watched from her terrace with the patient amusement of someone who has seen this exact scene approximately four thousand times before.

Then we were through, and everything stopped.

The villa opens onto a terrace that genuinely makes you forget your own name for a second. Lake Maggiore stretches below in that impossible blue that photographs never quite capture, with the mountains rising behind it like they are showing off. I stood there with my hand still on the gate latch, wearing one flip flop because the other had fallen off during the crisp incident, and felt something in my chest do a small, embarrassing flip.

Inside, the place has that lovely lived-in quality that makes you immediately want to kick off your shoes and stay for a month. Terracotta floors, wooden beams that have seen a few centuries, furniture that looks chosen rather than assembled from a flatpack in a blind panic. The kitchen smelled faintly of rosemary from the garden, which I later discovered was absolutely enormous and slightly terrifying in its productivity. I have never felt so judged by a tomato plant.

We dumped our bags in the nearest bedroom without properly investigating, which turned out to be the one with the slightly firmer mattress. This discovery came at three in the morning when I woke up feeling like I had been sleeping on a very polite wooden plank. There are four bedrooms in total, each with its own character, but we were too giddy to do the sensible tour on arrival.

Instead, we opened the wine we had bought at a garage near the airport, which I am aware makes us sound like absolute heathens. We sat on that terrace as the light went golden and then pink and then that particular deep blue that only happens in places with serious mountains and serious water. The crickets started up. A boat puttered across the lake somewhere below. My other half quietly picked crisp fragments from their collar.

I thought about how we had rushed through the journey, anxious about flights and traffic and whether I had packed enough sunscreen. And now here we were, slightly broken, slightly ridiculous, completely unable to operate a simple gate latch, and utterly still for the first time in months.

The nonna's lights went out across the valley. I raised my plastic garage cup to her, silently, and promised myself I would learn to do absolutely nothing with a great deal more commitment.

Tomorrow, we would explore properly. Tonight, we had arrived, and that was quite enough.