I should have known the holiday was going to be eventful when I tried to put diesel in a petrol hire car at Trieste Airport. There I stood, nozzle in hand, wondering why it would not fit, while a very patient Italian man tapped his watch and explained my error with the kind of gestures that needed no translation. Forty minutes and one mortified phone call later, I was finally winding my way up the Slovene coast with a strangely light wallet and a vow never to assume all European fuel caps are created equal.

Portoroz appeared gradually, like a watercolour bleeding into view. One moment I was navigating pine-scented bends above the Adriatic, the next I was descending into a proper seaside town with a grand old hotel fronting the water and a promenade that looked like it had been waiting for someone with an ice cream to stroll along it. My apartment sat in a modern block just back from the main strip, close enough to hear the evening murmur of the cafes but tucked away enough to feel like a local's secret.

The kitchen, I noticed immediately, was going to be the making or breaking of this trip. I am the sort of person who buys cookbooks for holidays I never take and watches food programmes at midnight while eating toast. Here was my chance to actually use a proper kitchen in a country whose cuisine I barely knew. The fridge hummed optimistically. The hob looked straightforward enough. I unpacked my single pan with the confidence of a man who has definitely watched too many cooking shows and not done enough actual cooking.

My first morning demanded the market in Piran, barely ten minutes up the road. I use "demanded" because I had read about it in three different guidebooks and built it up considerably in my head. The reality was better than my anticipation, which almost never happens. Stalls spilled with tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, bundles of wild asparagus, and salt from the nearby Secovlje pans that the vendor let me taste from her palm like some kind of ancient greeting. I bought olive oil from a man who spoke mostly in gestures and numbers written on cardboard, and bread from a bakery where the woman seemed faintly disappointed I only wanted one loaf. "For two days?" she asked, in that universal tone of maternal concern that transcends language barriers.

Back at the apartment, I attempted my first proper meal. The plan was simple: grilled fish, market vegetables, good bread. The execution featured smoke alarm negotiations, a fish that stuck to the pan with genuine determination, and a moment where I stood in my pants at midnight eating slightly burnt sea bream straight from the serving dish because I had given up on plates entirely. It was, I must confess, absolutely delicious. There is something about food you have slightly failed at but still finished that tastes better than restaurant perfection.

The local shops in Portoroz itself became my daily pilgrimage. A tiny supermarket near the harbour stocked mysterious sausages and cheese that the woman behind the counter would slice with theatrical precision. I became embarrassingly regular at a bakery that did these extraordinary custard-filled doughnuts, arriving each morning with the hopeful expression of a man who definitely did not need another doughnut but was absolutely having one anyway.

One evening I attempted to recreate a dish I had seen at a waterfront restaurant, some kind of pasta with local truffles. The truffles I found were apparently not quite the right sort, or possibly I used approximately seven times too many. The kitchen smelled like a forest floor for three days. My neighbour knocked to check I was alright. I ate the whole thing out of stubbornness and spent the following afternoon drinking coffee in a cafe, contemplating my life choices and watching elderly men play bocce with the kind of intensity usually reserved for international sport.

The self-catering life revealed itself in small moments. Morning coffee on the balcony with bread still warm from the bakery. Afternoon trips to buy wine from a shop where the owner talked me through his selections with the passion of a man discussing his children. The night I made a simple salad with tomatoes, salt, oil, and bread, and sat eating it in silence because it needed absolutely nothing else, no conversation, no distraction, just the taste of something properly grown in proper sunlight.

I never did master the local cuisine in any meaningful way. My fish remained slightly stuck, my pasta occasionally over-truffled, my timing never quite right. But I ate better than I have on any holiday where someone else did the cooking, not because the food was technically better, but because I had chosen it, failed at it, adjusted, and eaten it anyway, usually in my pants at improbable hours, usually happier than I had any right to be.