I have never been so pleased to see a pothole in my entire life. After a flight to Olbia, a hire car that smelled faintly of fish, and two hours of winding through Sardinia's northern hills, that crater in the road meant we had finally found Costa Paradiso. My partner, Marcus, had insisted on navigating. His phone had died somewhere near Trinita d'Agultu, and I had spent the last twenty minutes hissing "just ask someone" while he gripped the steering wheel like a man defusing a bomb. The mishap, when it came, was entirely my fault. I leapt out at what I thought was our turn, tripped over my own sandals, and sent an entire bag of pistachios from the airport shop cascading across the tarmac. A local dog appeared from nowhere and ate them. All of them. Marcus just wound down the window and said, "Well, that'll be twelve euros well spent then."

The complex itself crept up on us, nestled into that extraordinary red granite landscape that looks almost Martian against the Mediterranean blue. Our apartment was one of those whitewashed cubes that seem to grow straight out of the rock, and I will admit I stood there like a proper tourist, mouth actually open, while Marcus wrestled our cases from the boot. The air smelled of juniper and salt and something faintly herbal that I later learned was wild thyme growing in the scrub. It was that particular kind of silence that makes you aware of your own breathing. Then a gecko darted across the wall and I yelped, and the moment passed.

The woman who checked us in spoke rapid Italian that Marcus attempted to answer with his GCSE Spanish. She was very patient. Very. She showed us the terrace, which jutted out over nothing much except a spectacular view of the sea, and explained that the pool was a ten-minute walk down the hill. "Down is easy," she said, with the knowing smile of someone who has watched many Brits discover that up is not. We nodded sagely. We would learn this lesson properly the following morning, clutching water bottles and dignity in roughly equal measure.

That first evening, we did not venture far. There is something about arriving somewhere that makes unpacking feel like an adventure in itself. I arranged my three identical summer dresses in a wardrobe that smelled of cedar. Marcus opened and closed every kitchen drawer, as men seem compelled to do. We sat on that terrace with supermarket wine and watched the light change over the water, that slow golden shift that makes the whole Mediterranean feel borrowed from a film set. A couple in the next apartment waved. We waved back. It was all very civilised, very unlike us.

I found myself thinking, as the jet lag softened my edges, about how terrible I am at transitions. The journey itself I can manage. The being there, fine. But that liminal space of arrival, of not quite belonging yet, usually makes me itch with restlessness. Here, though, surrounded by that absurd, beautiful rock and the endless sea, I felt something rare. Permission, perhaps. To be slightly useless. To have just spilled pistachios and not quite speak the language and still be exactly where I was supposed to be.

The dog, I should add, looked entirely fine the next day. Better than fine, actually. He was waiting near the same spot, presumably hoping for more hapless English arrivals with loose grip on their snacks. I like to think we understood each other, that dog and I. Two creatures who had found their way to a remarkable corner of the world, making do and making the best of it.