I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I packed the sat nav but forgot the charging cable. There we were, crawling up the A44 towards Egmond aan Zee with my phone dying in the cup holder and my partner reading directions off a screenshot like some kind of maritime navigator. "Turn left at the windmill," she said. There are approximately forty-seven windmills in North Holland. We took the wrong one, ended up in a farmyard, and had to reverse past a very judgmental-looking goat.

By the time we found the bungalow park, I was ready to eat my own shoe. Fortunately, the little place we'd booked had a kitchen that looked like it had seen some action. Proper cooker, decent-sized fridge, and a balcony that smelled of sea air and someone else's barbecue. I dumped the bags, opened the nearest window, and declared we were finding food immediately before I became unpleasant.

The walk into Egmond aan Zee proper took about ten minutes, past dunes that looked like they'd been plucked from a postcard and holiday homes that made me briefly envious of people with more sensible packing skills. The village itself is one of those brilliant Dutch seaside spots that hasn't entirely given itself over to tourism. Yes, there are ice cream shops and bike hire places, but there's also a proper butcher and a bakery that smells like actual bread rather than factory sadness.

We found a fish stall near the beach and I did something I immediately regretted: I ordered raw herring. The man behind the counter handed it to me with onions and a little Dutch flag, and I stood there on the pavement trying to eat it like a local while seagulls circled with what I can only describe as professional interest. My partner filmed the whole thing. I have never looked more like a man questioning his life choices. The herring was actually decent, though I maintain that eating fish while standing in a car park is a strange national custom.

That evening we attempted self-catering, which is where I must be honest about my limitations. The bungalow had a perfectly good kitchen, and the local Albert Heijn supermarket had everything we needed. What I lacked was talent. I bought pork chops, some vague vegetables, and a bottle of wine that I chose entirely based on the picture on the label. The result was edible but spiritually disappointing. My partner made a face that said "I love you but please never cook this again." We ate it on the balcony with the sea somewhere in the distance and agreed that tomorrow we would do better.

The next morning I went to the bakery while she slept in. I returned with fresh stroopwafels, proper brown bread, and cheese that the woman behind the counter had cut with the seriousness of a surgeon. We ate breakfast in our pyjamas with the windows open, and I felt briefly like a person who has their life together. The cheese was aged and nutty, the bread dense and proper, and the stroopwafels were still warm enough to bend slightly when you bit them. I ate three and felt no regret.

Lunch became our main event most days. We found a little place on Dorpsstraat that did uitsmijter, which is essentially a massive open sandwich with ham and fried eggs on top. I ordered it with everything, which the waitress seemed to respect. It arrived on a plate the size of a hubcap and I demolished it in a state of pure happiness, yolk running everywhere, my partner laughing at my enthusiasm. The Dutch do not mess about with lunch. There is no pretence, no small portions arranged artistically. There is bread, there is meat, there is egg, there is your afternoon sorted.

We tried cooking properly on our third night. I had learned my lesson and kept things simple: mussels from the fishmonger near the harbour, cooked with garlic and white wine, served with fries from the chip shop around the corner. The mussels cost next to nothing and took seven minutes. The chip shop man asked if I wanted mayonnaise and I said yes because when in Rome, or rather when in North Holland. We ate them on the sofa with our fingers, a bowl of shells growing between us, watching something incomprehensible on Dutch television. It was one of the best meals I have ever had, though I cannot fully separate the food from the feeling of being somewhere else, somewhere simple, somewhere the biggest problem was whether to walk on the beach before or after dinner.

The local market on Saturday morning was in Alkmaar, a short bus ride away. I had read about it in a guidebook and dragged my partner along with promises of cheese. The Waagplein cheese market is absolutely as touristy as it sounds, with men in white outfits and wooden barrows and a whole ritual that must confuse the actual cheese traders no end. But the surrounding market stalls were brilliant. We bought proper Dutch pancakes from a woman who cooked them on a massive griddle, thin and enormous, covered in stroop. I had mine with apple and cinnamon and ate it walking around like a child at a fairground. We bought cheese to take home, proper aged Gouda that the man wrapped in paper and warned us not to refrigerate. We bought speculaas biscuits that tasted of Christmas and brown caf sugar that I have since used in everything.

On our final evening we did not cook. We found a restaurant on the seafront, nothing fancy, just a place with plastic chairs and a view of the North Sea. I had kibbeling, which is battered white fish served with a garlic sauce that I suspect was mostly mayonnaise. She had a massive bowl of mussels cooked in beer, which she ate with the confidence of someone who has not recently embarrassed herself with herring. We drank Dutch beer and watched the light change over the water, and I thought about how holidays are not really about the food even when they are entirely about the food. They are about the permission to care too much about breakfast, to walk to a bakery in your slippers, to eat pancakes at eleven in the morning without explanation.

We left the next morning with the car packed, the sat nav now charged and ignored in favour of my partner's screenshot method. I had gained weight, obviously. I had also gained a small collection of spices from the supermarket, a wheel of cheese wrapped in my clothes, and a determination to learn one proper Dutch recipe before our next trip. I have not yet done this. But I think about that uitsmijter sometimes, and the mussels, and the way the stroopwafel bent in the morning light, and I know I will go back.