Mine are regularly shattered, prompting resolutions to never fall into the trap again… until the next time. The most recent example was in the Black Forest where the scales fell from my eyes and I realised just how much my views had been shaped by what amounted to little more than subliminal and not so subliminal media propaganda throughout my life.

Perceptions can be formed by what we read or what we actually experience. We all know, or should, that anything we read in the media has to be treated with caution, questioned before being accepted. But you can trust your experiences surely. No, sorry, that’s not a given either.

For example, if I were to ask most people to list in order of the least touristy to most touristy how they viewed markets in Barcelona, Tenerife and somewhere like Issigeac in the Dordogne I’m willing to bet the order would be Dordogne being least touristy followed by Barcelona and then, that most popular of mass tourism destinations, Tenerife.

The order I’d put them in would be Tenerife, then Barcelona and finally Issigeac as most touristy.

Before you dismiss me as a crazy person, hear me out.

Barcelona’s famous La Boqueria market off La Rambla attracts hordes of visiting tourists who ogle the stalls and, I’ve been one of them, generally get in the way of local people try to actually do some shopping. It’s a market which lives up to its reputation of being home to the most incredible range of produce as well as tiny tapas stalls. As such it is a top attraction. But in some ways it’s an urban zoo where visitors go to gawp at a slice of real life in Catalonia’s great city.

Because locals still outnumber visitors La Boqueria lies in the middle ground for me in tourism terms.

Issigeac, considered on of the best markets in the northern Dordogne, is every picturesque inch what you want a French country market to be. It’s a food lover’s Nirvana consisting of stalls piled high with produce so teasingly tempting it makes you want to weep that you can’t buy and try everything. Every Sunday morning Issigeac is filled to capacity with people making suitably impressed sounds as they squeeze through the narrow winding lanes. But the most dominant language I heard when I browsed the market stalls there was English, some of it with various American drawls but English nonetheless.

In some ways Issigeac was quite the most touristy market I’d been to in a while, but that was okay because it was France. It had travel cred.
If the same people browsing and buying had been amongst so many Brits and Americans in a market in the Canary Islands, they might have cited it as proof of how touristy the Canary Islands are.

Which brings me to farmers’ markets on Tenerife of which the biggest and busiest are in the north of the island. As I stood in one recently, having struggled to get parked nearby because of the amount of people who visit these weekend markets, I pondered the folk around me as I grabbed a jar of chestnut honey; a wedge of goat’s cheese strong enough to blow the top of your head clean off, and red wine in a label-less bottle which came from ancient grapes grown in volcanic soil.

If there was another English speaking person amongst the hundreds of people around me, I didn’t hear them. Tourists rarely go to these markets, of which there are many. Almost all of them were Tinerfeños – local people.

There was no contest when it came to which market of the three was the least touristy.

That’s the difference between perceptions and reality for you. And these perceptions apply to destinations all over the world.

This is only meant to be food for thought. All markets mentioned, however, sell the most deliciously delectable food to eat and that’s the most important reason for visiting them, touristy or not.

Jack is co-editor, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to online travel sites and travel magazines. Follow Jack on Google+

Maybe ‘shivering’ in September is pushing it; the point is it’s not pleasant.

And then I see him. The man with the big nose. The sight of him standing with his impressive proboscis pointing straight at gloomy skies clears the clouds from my face and I beam like a kid who went to sleep in November and woke up on Christmas morning.

Apologies if it sounds like the pudding is being generously over-egged, but I am completely and deliriously gob-smacked. I am gob-smacked and also aware that sometimes the ability to add two and two completely eludes me.

Don’t ask why the obvious escaped me but I’d never connected the medieval town of Bergerac with Edmond Rostand’s poet, skilled swordsman and doomed romantic, Cyrano before.

The ‘de’ that separated Cyrano and Bergerac had clearly worked as an ingenious code.

Cyrano de Bergerac – a hero to all of us who believed we were invisible to our Roxanes.

I grab Andy’s arm.

“Look… it’s Steve Martin.”

Roxanne was one of the first movies we saw together at the cinema.

Her smile is a wide as mine. The ‘de’ code had fooled her as well. That, or maybe it was years of connecting the town’s name with a Jersey based TV detective.

It’s a depressing Monday in Bergerac. The streets are empty, the shops are shut and the drizzle is doing its best to make fairy tale medieval streets seem mundane.

It really doesn’t matter. We’ve seen Cyrano de Bergerac. It might seem insignificant to others. But it’s often these little unexpected pleasures that cast the brightest glow on our travels.

After a wet wander and a warming French omelette and fries, the time comes for us to depart the Dordogne for Provence.

As we leave Bergerac we pause at Place de la Mirpe à Bergerac where there’s another statue of the man with the big nose.

Adieu Cyrano. Vacuous souls are still propping themselves up with others’ words.

The world never really changes.

Jack is co-owner, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to lots of other places. Follow Jack on Google+

Stalls piled high with sinful goodies blow kisses at your senses as you stroll by. It’s a folly to try to ignore their Sirens’ call. You know you want to sin and you also know they’re going to break through your defences at some point so that you’ll eventually fling yourself across a mountain of fromage in defeat, crying ‘I want to eat of all of this…’

Maybe that’s just me.

Our voyage across France involved a few gastronomic peaks and troughs. In some places the food, although fine, wasn’t quite of a level that we had expected of a land with a rich and buttery gastronomic reputation. Even a restaurant with a Michelin star lacked that essential je ne sais quoi.

It’s probably fair to say that our most memorable culinary experiences weren’t in restaurants. They took place in the homes of friends, during simple al fresco lunches at conveniently placed picnic tables in the middle of nowhere, and even in our chambre d´hôtel where we had a working dinner whilst picking at a selection of creamy local fromages and terrines laid out on an antique stool.

This was thanks in the main to the produce you can pick up in French markets like the bustling Sunday affair in Issigeac in the Dordogne.

Visualise what the perfect French market should look like and Issigeac won’t be far away; a warren of narrow streets where stalls are laid out under the creaky awnings of fairy tale 14th and 15th century abodes, some made from solid stone others with ancient timber frames.

They say Issigeac is normally a drowsy town but on market it day it positively bulges at the seams. The main streets are packed with locals and tourists. I’m surprised at just how many British and American voices there are around me. We live on Tenerife, an island with a reputation for being overrun by Brits but, ironically, you’ll be hard pushed to hear an English speaking voice at the farmer’s markets in the north of Tenerife.

Once we enter the market, the words around us become an anonymous drone as they are replaced by a language that appeals to the nose rather than the ears. Our friends, Linda and Robert, veer off to a stall where a man expertly cuts thick slices from a huge ham. We drift away to explore Issigeac, ducking up alleys and through Medieval tunnels, pausing to suck in the fruity aroma of mountainous punnets of plump strawberries and the salty air surrounding a row of wicker baskets filled with an aphrodisiac overdose of oysters.

The quirky beauty of Issigeac distracts every now and again; a chain of chillies below wooden shutters, a stone ear protruding from a wall, a floral bicycle – but the lure of the sweet and the savoury invariably wins out.

Our curious noses lead us past peaks of glistening olives and dunes of exotic spices until we arrive at what we view as the Holy Grail of French markets; the fromage stalls.

We metaphorically drop to our knees and offer ourselves to the fromage king. Or, in other words, in stumbling and stuttering French (Andy’s that is, mine missed the plane apparently) ask him to hit us with something strong and hard.

He does; we ‘MMMM’, maybe a bit too loudly, and buy the first thing he recommends… with a generous wedge of Brie thrown in for good measure.

At that point our friends appear with bags bulging with an excess of Gallic goodies including spicy sausages, nostalgically good ham from the ham man and the pièce de résistance – extravagant paté-filled fig and apricot.

After a swift biere and an even swifter tour of a glass art exhibition (turned out it was a private showing), we retire to our ridiculously idyllic base in the Dordogne countryside. For the rest of a sunny Sunday afternoon we pick at food so good it encourages embarrassing noises and wine so evilly quaffable  that you can forget any finger wagging warnings of ‘remember to drink responsibly’.

This is what Sunday afternoons were made for.

And therein lies the problem that French restaurants have. How can they compete with stocking up on exactly what turns on your taste-buds at atmospheric markets like the one in Issigeac, and then scoffing and drinking the spoils at leisure with good friends in a soul-soothing setting where no one cares how long you linger?

C’est magnifique.

Issigeac market takes place every Sunday from 8.30am until early afternoon (some info says 12.30, others 1.30pm). There are more stalls during the summer months. We were there in September and the streets were full of stalls. As well as food and wine, there are handicrafts on sale.

Jack is co-owner, writer and photographer for BuzzTrips and the Real Tenerife series of travel websites as well as a contributor to lots of other places. Follow Jack on Google+