Getting to Ragusa Ibla was always going to be an adventure, but nobody warned me about the suitcase. We'd flown into Catania, picked up the hire car, and spent a glorious two hours winding through Sicilian countryside that looked like it had been painted by someone who really, really liked the colour gold. The late afternoon sun was doing that thing where everything glows like a filtered Instagram photo, except this was actually real and I didn't have to pretend I was having a nice time.

The trouble started when we reached the old town itself. Ragusa Ibla sits perched on its hill like a proud toddler who's climbed something they shouldn't have, all baroque churches and honey-coloured buildings tumbling down narrow streets. Our cottage was somewhere in that maze. What we hadn't fully appreciated, in our enthusiasm for authentic Sicilian living, was that "authentic" often means "no parking within half a mile and streets designed for donkeys who were on diets."

I wrestled our largest suitcase out of the boot while my wife gave me that look. You know the one. The "you insisted on packing the kitchen scales and three types of flip-flop" look. I had indeed packed the kitchen scales. Don't ask. Something about making proper coffee and needing precision. The suitcase had one of those flimsy extendable handles that wobbles ominously when you load it with more than a pair of socks. I gave it a confident tug. It came off in my hand.

There I stood, in a cobbled street that had probably witnessed actual medieval processions, holding a plastic handle while the suitcase sat in the boot like a smug brick. My children found this hilarious, obviously. My wife found it predictable. I found myself wondering whether I could carry a 23-kilogram case down several hundred metres of uneven stone steps without requiring medical attention.

I could not, as it turned out, carry it gracefully. I could carry it with frequent stops, muttered apologies to passing locals, and one moment where I genuinely considered abandoning it outside a church and claiming divine intervention. A very kind elderly gentleman watched my struggle for a full minute before offering to help, which he did with the effortless strength of someone who had clearly been carrying things up hills since before Italy was unified. I felt about ninety years old and approximately four feet tall.

But then we turned the final corner, and there was our cottage. And I understood, immediately, why people put up with the stairs and the cobbles and the occasional handle-related humiliation. It was one of those proper old stone buildings with wooden shutters and a small terrace that looked out over the valley, where the light was settling into something soft and pink and entirely unfair. The sort of view that makes you forgive a suitcase for its betrayal.

Inside, it had that lovely lived-in feeling you don't get in hotels. Slightly uneven floors, furniture that had actually been used, a kitchen where someone had clearly cooked real meals rather than just photographed them. My children immediately claimed the twin bedroom, my wife opened every window to let in the evening air, and I stood on that terrace with a beer from the local shop and felt something unknot in my shoulders that I hadn't realised was tied.

The kitchen scales stayed in the case for three days. I made terrible coffee with rough guesses and it tasted absolutely brilliant.