I have never been brilliant with directions, so the fact I made it to Portoroz at all deserves some sort of medal. The plan was simple: fly to Trieste, hire a car, pootle up the Slovenian coast, find our holiday flat, collapse by the pool. What actually happened involved me confidently ignoring the sat nav, following a sign for "Piran" because it looked picturesque, and suddenly finding myself on a narrow coastal road with a fisherman waving at me to reverse because I was heading straight for his morning catch spread out to dry.

The flat itself was part of a small complex tucked just back from the main waterfront, the sort of place where families in flip flops wander between pool and apartment with damp towels draped over shoulders. We arrived flustered, slightly sun-cooked, and with me still muttering apologies to that fisherman in three different languages just in case. My partner gave me the look. You know the one. The look that says "I love you but please never navigate again."

First impressions of the place proper came in waves. The pool area was smaller than the website made it appear, which normally would irk me, but there was something immediately comforting about it. A few loungers, some shade from proper trees rather than those flimsy parasols that blow inside out at the first sneeze, and the soft hum of someone's portable speaker playing something vaguely Croatian from two balconies over. It felt lived-in. Real. The sort of pool where you actually chat to the family on the next lounger rather than pretending they don't exist.

The flat itself had that particular holiday-rental smell of clean sheets and someone else's furniture, which I happen to love. Basic kitchen, decent fridge, balcony just big enough for two chairs and a small table where we later ate bread and prsut ham while the kids finally stopped bickering about who got the window seat in the car. The air conditioning hummed like an old friend. I stood there with a warm fizzy drink from the corner shop and felt something unknot in my shoulders that I hadn't realised was tight.

What struck me most, I suppose, was how quickly the mishap of the journey faded into something almost fond. There we were, slightly lost people in a slightly unfamiliar place, and nobody cared. The woman in the shop didn't mind my pointing and smiling. The fisherman, when we passed him later walking along the shore, actually grinned and tipped his cap. The whole rhythm of Portoroz is slower than I am used to, less performative somehow. People swim, they eat, they sit. The salt from the salt pans nearby gives the evening air this particular quality, not quite a smell, more a texture.

I think I needed reminding that holidays do not require perfection. The wrong turn became our story. The smaller pool meant we talked more. The simple flat meant we cooked simple things and ate them slowly. My navigation skills are still dreadful, obviously. But sitting on that balcony as the light went soft over the Adriatic, watching my children finally peaceful with ice cream dripping down their wrists, I felt genuinely grateful for my own incompetence. It got us here, eventually, and here was exactly where we needed to be.