I have never been so grateful for a broken suitcase wheel in my life. There I was, dragging my battered holdall through Stockholm's cobbled streets, one wheel spinning uselessly like a drunken windmill, when I took a wrong turn somewhere near Gamla Stan and found myself utterly, gloriously lost. The Google Maps had given up on me. My phone battery was gasping its final breath. And I was supposed to be checking into a little holiday let on Faringsoe, which I now realised with some embarrassment I had been pronouncing entirely wrong for weeks.

The mishap that started it all happened at Arlanda Airport, where in my eagerness to beat the rush for the airport bus, I managed to wedge my suitcase in the revolving door. A queue formed. A small child pointed. I yanked, the wheel snapped, and I spent the rest of the journey to the city centre performing an awkward one-wheeled shuffle that drew sympathetic looks from fellow passengers. By the time I reached Stockholm proper, I was flustered, sweaty, and in no state to navigate.

So there I stood, lost among ochre-coloured buildings that looked like they belonged in a fairy tale, with no functioning map and a growing conviction that I would be sleeping on a park bench beside some very judgmental Swedish ducks. I wandered down what I thought was a main thoroughfare and found instead a tiny courtyard where an elderly gentleman was feeding breadcrumbs to a pigeon he had apparently named. He looked at me, at my wonky suitcase, and without a word pointed toward the water.

I followed his finger, mostly because I had no better plan, and stumbled upon a ferry terminal I never would have found otherwise. The boat to Faringsoe was just leaving, and I hopped on with the reckless abandon of someone who had abandoned all hope of competence. The twenty-minute crossing became the most unexpectedly magical part of my journey. Stockholm's archipelago unfolded around me, island after island of pine trees and red wooden houses, the water so still it looked like polished glass. I had planned to take the direct bus. Instead I got this.

Faringsoe itself revealed itself slowly, the ferry threading between smaller islands before depositing me at a jetty where bicycles leaned against a wooden railing and the air smelled of pine needles and something faintly smoky, like distant barbecues. My accommodation sat up a gentle slope, a traditional Swedish cottage with white-painted wood and dark green trim, the sort of place that makes you feel immediately that you have stepped out of ordinary life and into something more deliberate, more peaceful.

I never did find the proper road to the cottage. I took a path through birch trees that I suspect was meant for local dog walkers, my suitcase now fully defeated and carried like an awkward toddler. The path opened suddenly onto a small clearing with a view across the water that made me stop and simply stand there, still holding my broken luggage, feeling rather ridiculous and rather wonderful all at once.

The cottage itself exceeded every expectation that my chaotic arrival had failed to prepare me for. A small veranda faced the water, furnished with weathered wooden chairs that had clearly witnessed decades of evening glasses of wine. Inside, everything was simple and carefully considered: a compact kitchen with a proper coffee maker, windows that framed the greenery outside like living paintings, and a bed so invitingly piled with blankets that I wanted to crawl in immediately despite it only being mid-afternoon.

That first evening, having repaired myself with strong coffee and a pastry from a bakery I found by following my nose down an unmarked lane, I sat on that veranda and watched the light change over the water. A family of ducks paddled past, the adults shepherding improbably tiny ducklings. Somewhere across the water, someone was playing an accordion, badly but with tremendous enthusiasm. I thought about my broken wheel, my dead phone, my complete failure to follow any kind of sensible plan, and I laughed out loud at the sheer improbability of ending up here, in this moment, in this perfect hidden corner of Stockholm's archipelago that I would never have discovered without being spectacularly, fortunately lost.

Some holidays you plan meticulously. Others, like this one, you simply fall into, gracelessly and gratefully, and somehow they become the ones that stay with you.