I have never been so pleased to see a sign for a place I could barely pronounce. Twelve hours after leaving Luton, there it was: Bibione. Not "Bibby-ohn" as I had been confidently telling everyone for weeks, but something closer to "Bee-bee-OH-nay," which I discovered when the nice man at the Venice car hire desk repeated it three times with increasing concern.

The journey had been one of those classic British holiday odysseys. Up at four, flight at seven, bus to the car hire place, then the slow realisation that Italian motorways are not the M1 and Italian drivers do not believe in lane discipline in any form I recognised. My partner drove while I navigated, a arrangement that tested our relationship roughly every forty minutes. The mishap came just outside Mestre, where I confidently directed us onto what I insisted was "definitely the right slip road" based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever. Forty minutes of Venetian industrial estate later, we admitted defeat and let the satnav take over. I have never lived it down. I never will.

By the time we reached Bibione itself, I was prepared to sleep in a lay-by. The town appeared suddenly after a stretch of flat coastal road, all low-rise apartments and pine trees and that particular quality of light you only get where land meets lagoon. We found the residence easily enough, a tidy cluster of buildings that looked exactly like the pictures, which never happens. I had been braced for disappointment, for wonky angles and clever photography hiding some grim truth. Instead, there was the small pool, there were the neat balconies, there was the reception area with a woman who spoke better English than I do and clearly had seen every variety of exhausted British arrival.

The apartment itself was on the first floor, which I climbed with the enthusiasm of a man who had spent the previous twelve hours in various states of cramp. But opening that door was one of those small holiday moments that makes the whole slog worthwhile. Cool tiles underfoot. Actual space to move around, not the cupboard I had privately feared. A little kitchen area that looked like someone had recently cared about it. And the balcony, which I stepped onto with the last of my energy, to find the afternoon sun still warm and the smell of pine and salt coming off somewhere not far away.

I stood there in my crumpled travelling clothes, still faintly smelling of aeroplane, and felt something shift. The panic of the wrong turn, the bickering, the stale sandwich at Stansted, all of it started to loosen. My partner appeared with two plastic cups of supermarket wine, because we had not yet found the corkscrew, and we clinked them with the solemnity of survivors.

That first evening, we did almost nothing. Walked to the nearest stretch of beach, which took ten minutes through quiet streets of similar low buildings. Ate pizza at a place where the waiter did not mind our Italian or our tiredness. Sat on that balcony until the mosquitoes arrived in force and drove us inside. I remember thinking, as I fell into sleep almost before my head reached the pillow, that this was exactly what I had needed and had almost forgotten how to want.