I have never been so grateful for a sat nav in my entire life, and I say that as someone who once followed Google Maps straight into a farmer's field near Shrewsbury. This time, the trouble started the moment we landed at Alicante airport, bleary-eyed and already arguing about whose turn it was to drive the hire car. My partner had booked what he described as "a lovely little place in Valencia," which turned out to be Ciudad Quesada Rojales, a good hour south of the city itself. I discovered this roughly forty minutes into our journey, when I finally bothered to look at the actual address rather than the glossy photos of the villa's pool.

"We're not in Valencia," I announced, staring at my phone.

"We're in the Valencia region," he said, with the desperate confidence of a man who knows he has made a significant geographical error.

The sat nav saved us, or nearly did. It guided us through orange groves and past roadside stalls selling enormous watermelons, until we reached a roundabout where a bronze statue of some local dignitary appeared to be giving us a distinctly unimpressed look. We missed the turning twice. The third time, a small elderly gentleman on a scooter pulled up beside us at the traffic lights, removed his helmet with theatrical slowness, and pointed emphatically at the very road we needed. He said nothing. Just pointed, nodded once, and put his helmet back on. We followed his finger like it was divine intervention.

The villa itself was tucked down a quiet residential street, all whitewashed walls and terracotta roofs, with palm trees doing that satisfying tropical sway in the warm breeze. My first impression, once I'd stopped sulking about the non-Valencia situation, was that someone had made a genuine effort. The pool glittered invitingly. The terrace had proper furniture, not the wobbly plastic stuff you get in lesser rentals. I was mentally composing my gracious acceptance speech when I attempted to open the front door using the key safe code, succeeded on the fourth attempt, and immediately walked into a broom cupboard.

The actual front door was to the left. The broom cupboard was surprisingly well-organised.

By now it was early evening, and we were starving. The little commercial centre near the villa was waking up, Spanish-style, with families emerging for their paseo and restaurants beginning to clatter with activity. We found a table at a place called something unpronounceable with a picture of a paella pan on the menu, and this is where the holiday truly began.

Our waiter was Miguel, sixty-ish, with eyebrows like abandoned caterpillars and a habit of leaning in conspiratorially whenever he spoke. He took one look at my attempt to order in phrasebook Spanish and switched to English that was somehow more Yorkshire than mine, acquired during fifteen years working in Leeds apparently. He recommended the arroz negro, told us his ex-wife was from Huddersfield, and warned us never to trust the ice cream machine at the supermarket two streets over. "Broken three summers," he said, with the gravity of someone discussing international espionage. "Always broken. They keep it there to mock people."

The paella arrived, proper and unhurried, and Miguel hovered to ensure we understood the sacred nature of the socarrat, that crispy bottom layer of rice. My partner committed the cardinal sin of immediately reaching for lemon, and Miguel's hand shot out to stop him. "First," he commanded, "you taste. Then you decide if you insult my kitchen." It was perfect. No lemon required. Miguel nodded, satisfied, and wandered off to terrify another table.

Walking back in the warm dark, cicadas roaring from every bush, I found myself reflecting on how quickly I'd pivoted from grumpy map-reader to contented holidaymaker. The misdirection, the broom cupboard, the sat nav confusion, the not-actually-Valencia revelation, it had all dissolved into something better than the pristine holiday I'd imagined. We had a week ahead of us in a place where strangers on scooters silently saved you, where waiters from Yorkshire via Spain educated you on rice etiquette, where the evenings moved at that particular Mediterranean pace that makes you forget what hurry ever felt like.

I still maintain my partner should have been clearer about the geography. But I will admit, standing on that villa terrace with a cheap Spanish beer and the pool lights flickering on below, that sometimes the wrong turning gets you somewhere worth being.