So there we were, me and the family, crammed into the car at Gatwick long-stay parking, and I suddenly realised I'd left the entire folder of printed booking details on the kitchen table. Three hours from home. Classic me. My wife gave me that look, you know the one, and I spent the whole flight to Barcelona frantically screenshotting emails like a teenager trying to delete their browser history before their mum checks the iPad.

The drive up the coast from Girona airport was actually gorgeous though, once I'd stopped sweating. Pine-clad hills dropping down to little coves, the Mediterranean winking at us through the gaps. Lloret de Mar itself was buzzing when we arrived, proper Spanish resort energy, all promenade strollers and ice cream queues. I was half-expecting our place to be sandwiched between nightclubs, if I'm honest.

But here's the thing, and I can't stress this enough, we turned off the main drag and suddenly it was all terracotta roofs and bougainvillea tumbling over garden walls. Our holiday home sat up a quiet residential street, nothing flashy, just a solid Catalan townhouse with a small terrace and shutters that had definitely seen some summers. The key was in the lockbox exactly where the email said, which genuinely surprised me given my track record with holiday logistics.

Stepping inside, that first hit of cool tile floor after the car journey, absolute bliss. The place smelled of clean laundry and something faintly lemony, which I've since decided was either actual lemons or very optimistic air freshener. The kitchen was compact but properly equipped, not one of those holiday lets where you get a blunt knife and a pan with no handle and you're expected to cook for six. My daughter immediately claimed the upstairs bedroom with the little balcony, naturally, and my son discovered the washing machine and asked if we could do a "holiday wash" because he's seven and finds domestic appliances thrilling. Kids are weird.

The terrace became our spot though. That first evening, we sat out with supermarket beers and crisps, watching the light change over the rooftops. You could hear distant pool splashing and someone practising guitar a few gardens over, playing the same three chords badly but enthusiastically. My wife caught me just staring at nothing and said I looked relaxed for the first time in months. I told her it was probably just heatstroke. She didn't laugh, but she smiled, which is basically the same thing with her.

I think what got me, that first day, was how unpretentious it all felt. No hotel lobby performance, no fighting for sun loungers with a towel at dawn. Just a lived-in house in a real neighbourhood, where an old chap walked his dog past at the same time every evening and always nodded hello. We waved back like locals by day three, which felt like a small victory.

The mishaps didn't stop, obviously. I managed to set off the smoke alarm making toast the next morning, and I still maintain that Spanish toasters are calibrated differently. But standing on that terrace with my slightly burnt breakfast, watching Lloret wake up below us, I properly exhaled for what felt like the first time in forever. Sometimes you need to forget your paperwork to find what you actually needed.