I have never been brilliant with directions, so when our sat-nav cheerfully announced "you have arrived" while we were clearly in a supermarket car park three streets away from anywhere resembling a holiday let, I was not entirely surprised. My wife gave me that look. You know the one. The children had already spotted a churros van and were staging a minor mutiny in the back seat. After ten minutes of reversing down narrow Catalan lanes, peering at house numbers and pretending I knew exactly where I was going, we finally found it. A proper little stone cottage tucked behind a lemon tree, with terracotta pots everywhere and a cat asleep on the wall who did not even bother opening one eye to judge us.

Blanes, as it turns out, is exactly the sort of place where you stop trying to be clever and just let things happen. We had driven up from Barcelona airport with the windows down, the smell of pine and sea air gradually replacing the diesel fumes of the city. The Costa Brava does this thing where it sneaks up on you. One minute you are on a perfectly ordinary motorway, the next you are winding through hills that look like someone has painted them especially for a postcard, all rocky coves and little boats bobbing about.

Our cottage had one of those heavy wooden doors that sticks slightly in the heat, so of course I shoulder-barged it like a complete idiot while my wife simply turned the handle and glided through. Inside it was cool and dark, with tiled floors that felt wonderful after the car journey and a kitchen that smelled faintly of garlic and last someone's else's holiday. The previous visitors had left behind a half-empty bottle of olive oil and a note wishing us well in three languages. I found this unbearably touching and read it aloud twice, until my eldest asked if we could go to the pool yet.

The garden was where we spent that first afternoon, doing absolutely nothing of any consequence. A small plunge pool, just deep enough for the children to cannonball into while shrieking, surrounded by those spiky Mediterranean plants that look like they could survive anything. I lay on a sun lounger that had definitely seen better days, sipping a beer I had remembered to put in the fridge three hours too late, and watched a gecko dart across the wall. My wife unpacked with the methodical efficiency of someone who knows that if she leaves it to me, we will still be living out of suitcases on day six.

By early evening the heat had softened into something almost friendly, and we wandered down towards the old town. Blanes does not do flashy. It does narrow streets and family-run restaurants where the waiter brings out bread without being asked and the children are given paper placemats to colour in. We ate grilled sardines and patatas bravas, and my daughter discovered she liked anchovies after years of claiming they were "the worst food in the universe." The walk back was uphill, which I had not fully appreciated in daylight, and I may have complained slightly more than a grown man should.

That first night I slept better than I had in months, on a mattress that was firmer than I would have chosen but somehow perfect anyway. Somewhere outside a dog barked once and thought better of it. I remember lying there thinking that this was the whole point, really. Not the Instagram moments or the tick-list sightseeing, but the simple business of being somewhere else together, with nothing much planned and no particular hurry to be anywhere. We had a week of this ahead of us. A week of morning swims and market trips and probably a few more wrong turns. I could not wait.