I have always believed that the best holidays begin with a small disaster, and our trip to Stresa in late autumn proved me absolutely right. We had been driving from Milan Malpensa, full of excitement about our lakeside apartment, when I confidently directed my partner down what I insisted was a shortcut. It was, in fact, a dead end leading to someone's olive grove. The owner, a splendid chap in wellies, watched us perform a seventeen-point turn with the patient amusement of a man who has seen this many times before. I waved apologetically. He raised his coffee cup. We pressed on.

The season had turned properly by the time we arrived in mid-November. Stresa sits on the western shore of Lake Maggiore, and I had expected the famous glamour of the place to feel diminished without the summer crowds. I could not have been more wrong. The autumn light gave everything a particular quality, that low golden angle that makes even ordinary buildings look like they belong in a painting. The grand hotels along the lakeside promenade had their shutters half-closed, preparing for their winter rest, and the town moved at a pace that felt genuinely lived-in rather than performed for visitors.

Our apartment was one of those typical Piedmontese properties, all terracotta floors and wooden shutters, with a balcony that looked directly across the water to the Borromean Islands. In summer, I imagine one fights for that view amongst a forest of sun loungers. In November, I had it entirely to myself each morning, wrapped in a blanket with a cup of something hot, watching the mist roll off the lake like steam from a kettle. The air carried that distinctive smell of woodsmoke and damp leaves that I associate with proper continental autumns, not the soggy disappointment we often get back home.

The weather shaped everything we did. We had packed optimistically, as Brits always do, and found ourselves buying scarves from a shop that was clearly selling off its summer stock. The proprietor, sensing our unpreparedness, produced a bottle of local Nebbiolo and insisted we sample it. This is how I remember Piedmont best: people with time to be generous because they are not overwhelmed by the seasonal rush. We walked the lakeside path to Belgirate one afternoon, the wind making proper work of our hair, and stopped at a trattoria where the menu had shifted entirely to warming things. Polenta, braised meats, chestnuts in everything. The proprietor explained that the summer menu had finished in September, and he looked almost relieved to be cooking proper food again.

There is something honest about visiting a place out of season. The apartment's heating clicked on in the evenings, and we could hear our neighbours through the walls, which would have been annoying except they were listening to opera at a reasonable volume and it felt like part of the atmosphere. We cooked simple meals with ingredients from the Thursday market, porcini mushrooms and fat white beans, and ate them with the windows cracked to let in that cold, lake-scented air.

I had worried that Stresa without its summer sparkle might feel sad, like a theatre with the lights up. Instead, it felt authentic in a way I had not expected. The season stripped away the performance and left something better: a real town, in a real landscape, going about its business while the lake did what it has done for millennia, rising and falling with the weather. I caught myself thinking that I preferred it this way, and then caught myself catching myself, which is always the sign of a holiday that has worked its way under your skin.

The morning we left, the first proper frost had settled. Our car windscreen needed scraping, and I performed this task with the grim competence of someone who has done it a thousand times at home. My partner laughed at me, wrapped in two jumpers and a borrowed hat, complaining about the cold in a place I had chosen specifically for its autumn character. I could not argue. The season had given us exactly what I had hoped for, and a little more besides.