The train from Alicante had been one of those journeys where you convince yourself you've packed light, only to spend four hours rearranging a single overstuffed rucksack around your knees while a toddler practices football against your seat. By the time we pulled into Valencia Joaquin Sorolla station, I was ready to kiss the platform. Instead, I kissed the floor. Well, nearly. My wheelie case caught on the gap between train and platform, I performed an involuntary curtsey to a bemused pensioner, and my phone launched itself from my jacket pocket with the enthusiasm of a Olympic diver. It survived. My dignity did not.

We had booked an Ador in the El Cabanyal district, a traditional fisherman's quarter east of the city centre, and the taxi driver seemed genuinely impressed we had strayed from the old town. "Bueno, bueno," he nodded, navigating the narrow streets where washing lines crisscrossed between pastel facades like bunting at a perpetual fiesta. The address led us to a modest townhouse with a facade the colour of faded apricot, shuttered windows, and a small ceramic plaque beside the door depicting the Virgin of the Forsaken. Very Valencia. Very reassuring.

The key was where the owner had promised, tucked in a rusted metal box behind a potted geranium that had seen better decades. I fumbled with the combination lock, convinced I had misremembered the code, until my partner gently pointed out I was turning the dials the wrong direction. Three times. The door opened with a satisfying creak onto a cool, tiled hallway that smelled faintly of lavender and old plaster. We stood there for a moment, blinking like moles, letting the hush settle over us.

The ground floor opened into a compact kitchen-diner that managed to feel both functional and genuinely lived-in. Not the sterile holiday-let aesthetic of identical grey sofas and motivational wall art, but mismatched chairs, a wooden table worn pale at the edges, and a proper gas hob that looked like it had cooked a thousand paellas. A small courtyard lay beyond French doors, barely four metres square, with a potted lemon tree shedding its scent into the warm air and a folding chair positioned precisely to catch the morning sun. I immediately pictured myself there with coffee and a terrible novel, achieving absolutely nothing.

Upstairs, the bedroom had terracotta floor tiles that stayed deliciously cool underfoot and a ceiling fan that rotated with the lazy rhythm of a Spanish afternoon. The bathroom was compact, tiled in blue and white, with a shower that promised proper water pressure and a mirror positioned to flatter absolutely nobody before nine in the morning. I looked anyway. Some habits die hard.

What struck me most, wandering between those modest rooms, was how immediately comfortable it felt. Not luxurious, not trying to impress, but honest. The kind of place where you could leave a coffee ring on the table without panicking, where the slightly wonky shelf in the bathroom suggested previous guests who had also knocked their shampoo off while half-asleep.

By evening, we walked the two minutes to the beach, still wearing our travel clothes, and stood with our shoes in our hands as the Mediterranean turned the colour of burnt sugar. A group of locals played volleyball further down, shouting in Valencian, and an old man cycled past with his dog trotting obediently alongside. I thought about my phone's near-death experience, my ridiculous curtsey, the wrong-turned lock. The small embarrassments of travel that somehow make the arrival sweeter.

We bought bread and jamon from a corner shop where the owner chatted away despite our broken Spanish, then returned to sit in that tiny courtyard as darkness fell and the lemon tree released its perfume into the cooling air. Somewhere nearby, a neighbour was cooking garlic in olive oil, and the sound of television laughter drifted from an open window. I had not expected to feel so immediately at home in a stranger's house, in a city I barely knew, still dusty from a train journey and a public stumble. But there it was. The mishaps had brought us here, and here was exactly where we wanted to be.