By the time we finally found Villa Boho, I'd already reversed into a stone wall, lost a flip-flop to an aggressive shrub, and assured my children that "Dad knows exactly where he's going" approximately seventeen times. The sat nav had given up on us somewhere near Sant Josep's main roundabout, and I was navigating by the position of the sun and sheer stubbornness. My wife was doing that breathing thing she does when she's choosing not to comment.

The villa itself appeared like a mirage at the end of a dusty track, all whitewashed walls and terracotta roof tiles glowing in the late afternoon light. I killed the engine and sat there for a moment, suddenly aware that my left arm was sunburnt in that patchy way you get when you've been hanging it out the window in a state of navigational stress. The kids were already scrambling out, abandoning seatbelts with the urgency of people who've been in a car for far too long.

The key was exactly where the property notes said it would be, which felt like a small miracle given how the rest of the journey had gone. I fumbled with the lock while my youngest performed an elaborate dance of needing the toilet immediately. The door swung open and cool air washed over us, carrying that particular smell of somewhere that's been quietly waiting - stone and wood polish and something faintly herby from the garden outside.

I stepped through and promptly walked straight into a low wooden beam. This is important, because it set the tone. I'm going to call it a moment of grounding. My wife calls it "classic you." Either way, rubbing my forehead, I actually looked around properly.

The place has this effortless, lived-in character that you can't manufacture. Not trying too hard, not aggressively designed, just comfortable in its own skin. The kitchen opens straight onto a covered terrace where a long wooden table sits waiting for someone to spill wine on it. The living area has proper sofas, the kind you actually sink into rather than perch on like you're in a showroom. My daughter immediately claimed a window seat with cushions piled like a nest, while my son discovered the pool through the glass doors and emitted a noise only dogs could fully appreciate.

I made us all proper cups of tea using the kettle, which felt like an absurdly British ritual to perform in a boho villa in Ibiza, but there you go. We took them outside and stood on the terrace in that dazed way you do after travel, watching the light change over the hills towards Cala Bassa. The garden's mature, not manicured, with olive trees and bougainvillea doing their own thing around the edges. A gecko darted across the wall and my wife actually smiled, the first proper one since we'd landed.

The pool was the evening's main event, obviously. The kids cannonballed while I sat on the edge with my feet in, still in my travel clothes, still with a faint beam-shaped dent in my forehead. The water was that perfect temperature where you don't gasp, you just ease in and stay. We ordered pizza from somewhere in Sant Josep village that the property folder recommended, and ate it at that long table with our fingers, too tired for plates and cutlery and civilisation.

Later, after the children finally collapsed in the bedrooms upstairs, my wife and I sat out with the last of a bottle of red we'd picked up at the airport. The beam incident had become funny by then, as these things do. She reminded me that I'd said the same thing about knowing where I was going on our honeymoon. I couldn't argue. There's something about this kind of holiday, this cottage-style break where you're cooking your own meals and arguing over who forgot the pool towels, that strips away the performance of it all. You're just there, slightly sunburnt, slightly lost, slightly ridiculous, together.

I woke early the next morning to the sound of someone small jumping into the pool at an antisocial hour, and lay there for a moment listening to the distant bells of sheep somewhere in the hills. The wall I'd reversed into was, I decided, a small price to pay.