I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when I got us lost before we'd even collected the hire car. Brindisi Airport is not large. It has approximately twelve doors and one main road out. Yet somehow I marched us to the wrong car park, stood there arguing with the machine for ten minutes, then realised I was in the long-stay zone for airport staff. My partner just raised an eyebrow in that way he has, the one that says "I love you but also how are you alive."

The drive to Ostuni took about forty minutes, winding through olive groves that looked like they'd been there since before manners were invented. I kept pointing at trulli roofs in the distance like a child spotting sheep. "There's one! There's another one!" My partner drove with the careful concentration of someone who had just remembered Italians treat indicators as optional extras.

We found the property down a narrow lane where the sat nav gave up and suggested we "proceed to desired location" with what felt like audible disappointment. A woman was leaning over a wall three doors down, watching our approach with the frank assessment of someone who had already sized up our parking attempt and found it wanting. This was Teresa, our neighbour for the week, though I didn't know it yet.

The key was in a lockbox, which I fumbled with for several minutes while Teresa observed in silence. Eventually she called out something in rapid Italian that I caught approximately none of. She sighed, disappeared, and returned with her grandson Marco, a teenager who spoke English with the bored fluency of someone who had learned it entirely from video games. He translated that the lockbox stuck in humidity, twisted it once, and it sprang open. Teresa nodded, satisfied, and went back to her wall-leaning without another word. Marco shrugged. "She likes to know who comes. She knows everything here. The police call her sometimes."

The property itself was a compact stone house with a small terrace and a view across rooftops to the cathedral's distant spire. I was busy photographing everything for the group chat when Marco reappeared with two small coffees in plastic cups. "Nonna says you drink this wrong, probably. She made proper ones." They were excellent. Bitter, tiny, somehow restorative. I drank mine on the terrace while Teresa watched from her wall, now joined by an elderly man in a cloth cap who I later learned was her husband, Vito. He said nothing at all for the entire week, but he was always there, present as furniture, occasionally emitting a grunt that Teresa treated as full conversation.

That evening we walked into Ostuni's old town, the white city glowing in the last light. We stopped at a small bar for aperitivo and found Marco working there, suddenly professional in a black shirt, recommending local wines with surprising authority. His boss, a heavy man called Franco with enormous hands and a permanently worried expression, kept emerging from the back to check Marco wasn't giving away too much bread. "He gave a whole basket to Germans last week," Franco confided to me, as if this were a crime against the state. "Beautiful people, the Germans. But they fill up on bread, then no second course. Marco! Less bread!"

On the walk back, Teresa was still on her wall, now with a small dog that hadn't been there before. She asked, through no translator this time, gesturing and repetition, whether we'd eaten properly. I showed her the photo of my orecchiette. She made a face that clearly indicated Franco was adequate but not exceptional, then produced a paper bag of something fried and warm. "Cavolfiore," she said, pushing it at me. Cauliflower fritters, I think, though they might have been artichoke. Delicious either way. She wouldn't accept thanks, just nodded and returned to her dog.

I fell asleep that night to the sound of Vito coughing somewhere in the darkness, a rhythmic, reassuring sound, and woke to find Marco had left fresh bread on our doorstep with a note: "Nonna says you need proper breakfast. Not Franco bread. Real bread." It was still warm. I ate it on the terrace, waving down to Teresa, who didn't wave back but did incline her head slightly, which felt like promotion.

Some holidays you remember for monuments or beaches. I think I'll remember this one for the surveillance.