I have never been so relieved to see a sign for Narni in all my life, and that includes the time I got lost in IKEA trying to find the exit. The drive from Rome had been straightforward enough until I decided my sat-nav was "probably wrong" and took what I confidently told my partner was a "scenic shortcut." Three hours, two nervous breakdowns, and one very narrow bridge later, we finally spotted the town perched on its hilltop, looking impossibly pretty and entirely unbothered by my suffering.

The property, a restored stone house on the outskirts, was everything the photos promised and somehow more. Terracotta floors that stayed cool even in the afternoon heat. A kitchen with an actual fireplace, which I immediately decided I would master despite having never cooked over open flame in my life. My partner raised an eyebrow but wisely said nothing.

We had arrived on market day, which in my hungry state felt like divine intervention. The Narni market sprawls through the old town's lower streets, and I use "sprawl" deliberately because I got lost in it within minutes. One moment I was examining pecorino aged in walnut leaves, the next I was being pressed against a stall of blood oranges by a determined nonna wielding a shopping trolley like a weapon. I emerged with far more than planned: fat porcini mushrooms, a length of umbelliferous wild fennel that smelled of aniseed and childhood summers I never actually had, lentils from Castelluccio because everyone said I must, and a jar of truffle honey that cost more than our hire car but which the vendor insisted would "change my life."

That first evening, drunk on ambition and a bottle of Sagrantino we had opened "just to breathe," I attempted to recreate something I had once seen on television. The porcini became a risotto of sorts, though "soup with aspirations" might be fairer. The wild fennel I had intended to stuff inside a pork fillet instead got chopped with increasing desperation as the meat refused to cook through at the edges while remaining suspiciously pink in the middle. My partner, who had wisely retreated to the terrace with the rest of the wine, called through that everything smelled "authentic." I chose to take this as compliment.

The lentils fared better the following night, cooked simply with garlic and the local olive oil I had purchased after extensive tasting that left me slightly unsteady. The oil was peppery and green, nothing like the mild stuff I buy at home, and I found myself drizzling it on everything with abandon, including bread that I had bought that morning still warm from the bakery near the cathedral. That bread, incidentally, was the reason I almost missed the Roman bridge. I had taken a bite while walking and simply stopped, standing in the middle of the path like a fool, unable to continue until I had finished the whole thing.

By day three I had developed a routine. Morning coffee on the terrace, then down to the town for provisions. The butcher on Via Garibaldi learned my face and would hold back cuts he thought I might like, though I suspect he also enjoyed my attempts at Italian, which he met with the patient encouragement one might offer a particularly dim child. The cheese shop became my confession booth, where I would admit my cooking disasters and receive both sympathy and increasingly specific advice.

I attempted pasta alla norcina one evening, the sauce of sausage and cream that is apparently straightforward. It was not straightforward. The sausage crumbled rather than broke, the cream split slightly, and I used the wrong pasta shape according to a book I found in the house. We ate it anyway, on the terrace as the swallows began their evening circuits, and I decided that perfection was overrated. The truffle honey, incidentally, did change my life, though mostly by making me someone who now spends twelve pounds on honey without hesitation.

On our final morning I made one last market visit, this time with purpose. I bought dried lentils to take home, more of that olive oil, and a small cake from the bakery made with almonds and lemon that I ate immediately on a bench near the fountain. A dog watched me with obvious interest. I shared a corner. This, I thought, is what I will remember: not the mishaps or the slightly raw pork, but the particular pleasure of eating something simple in a place that does not rush, where the woman selling you cheese also wants to know if you have visited the cathedral, and where getting lost remains, mostly, a very good idea.