I have never been so happy to see a petrol station in my life. Three hours into our drive from Venice Marco Polo, convinced I was being the organised one, I had managed to leave our entire folder of directions, booking confirmations and my dignity on the kitchen table back in Surrey. My partner Dave just sat there in the passenger seat, slowly eating the emergency crisps meant for the beach, saying nothing. That particular brand of silence only husbands who have been married twelve years can achieve.

We found the Novasol property down a quiet residential lane, a neat little bungalow with a small garden and one of those outdoor showers that looks charming in photos but you never actually use. I was still flustered from my navigational incompetence, so Dave took charge of the keys while I made straight for the kitchen. This, I decided, was where I would redeem myself. The Venetian Coast runs on food, and I was going to master it.

The kitchen was compact but properly equipped, which immediately triggered my unfortunate habit of overambitious holiday cooking. Within an hour I had produced a pasta dish so aggressively garlicky that Dave ate his portion on the terrace, claiming he wanted to watch the sunset, but I noticed he was sitting upwind. The local supermarket, a ten-minute walk toward the centre, had already become my temple. I went back three times that first evening alone, each time convinced I needed something else: proper olive oil, then fresh basil, then some local cheese I could not pronounce and bought purely because the woman behind the counter looked disappointed in my selection.

Bibione itself surprised me. I had expected pure resort territory, but the food culture runs deeper than the tourist restaurants along the main strip suggest. The morning market became our daily ritual. Not the fancy evening one with crafts and such, but the proper morning market where local pensioners jostle for position with their wheelie bags. I bought tomatoes that actually smelled of something, and artichokes I had no idea how to prepare. Dave watched me wrestle with them for twenty minutes before quietly looking up a video. We ate them that night with lemon and too much butter, sitting at the small kitchen table with the window open to the garden, and I felt genuinely proud of something that took six minutes of actual cooking.

The bakery near the beach became another fixation. Each morning I would emerge with some new regional variation on bread, convinced this was the day I would become the sort of person who casually references "this lovely little bakery near our place in Italy." The reality was me pointing at things behind glass while butchering the pronunciation of "grissini" and the baker politely pretending I had not just said something that sounded like a medical condition.

My crowning achievement came on our fourth day. I attempted risotto with local seafood, standing at that small hob, stirring like a woman possessed, adding stock in increments as if my life depended on it. Dave wandered in at one point, observed my intensity, and simply backed out again. It was not perfect. The rice had a slight crunch in places that no amount of enthusiastic stirring could fix. But we ate it on the terrace with cheap local wine, and I realised something slightly embarrassing: the mishaps were becoming the point. The forgotten folder, the garlicky pasta exile, the artichoke wrestling, the crunchy risotto. The food was good, often very good, but it was the trying that I would remember.

On our last morning I made one final trip to the bakery. The woman actually smiled before I pointed at anything. Progress, of a sort.