Looking back at my mad dash around France through the lazy lense of my Lomo LC-A film camera.

Glowing stone figures in the gardens of Versailles. It was so bright and brilliant it nearly burned my eyes:

Stepping up out of the subway system to spot the older (but not oldest) of the three eras of the Metro Stop signs made moving through the city even more movie-like:

A tiny drop of ornate greatness in the giant ocean of ornate awesome-nesss that was Le Train Blue restaurant. (Much more on that later.)

My first glimpse at the delightful Deyrolle taxidermy shop, and the first photo I took in France:

(Me and) my shirt sleeves annoyingly un-cuffed inside a Parisian Palace:

We traveled by train down to the coast into Nice for two days. It wasn’t any warmer there, but the palm trees seduced you and your bare arms into feeling otherwise:

A fizzy fountain back in the capital. Five seconds later, it full on splashed me as I ran away in an un-classy spaz:

I had suspected that once I visited France I would never want to leave. Nine days into my visit, it seemed as though I truly never would…

My trip began with a frenzied flurry of cathedrals and cafes, croissants and charm. Every day was a rigorously scheduled stampede past Paris’s prettiest or pleasingly grittiest spaces and places.

Striving to slot in not only the iconic museums and monuments of history but the long and lovely list of Treasury reader recommendations of shops and stylish sites as well, there were few moments in my first days in France that felt fully experienced. Fully felt.

A silvery gold brunch at Ladurée with baskets of baked bliss and pitchers of milkshake-thick hot chocolate was one of the few itinerary items I didn’t just check swiftly off of my list, but actually absorbed languidly with all my senses and my entire soul.

For anyone who carts at least three cameras to any vacation destination, it can be a tricky challenge to not simply photograph the glory of your getaway, but actually FEEL it too. I have to get better at this.

As the trip was just about to end, an ashy disaster in Iceland erupted, shutting down all European air traffic and trapping us on the far side of the ocean. Unsure of whether we would return home to Minnesota in mere days via plane, or not for three months via a sluggish U.S. Army sea vessel, we washed our clothes, mildly panicked, at a Parisian laundromat. (And accidentally laundered 10 Euros worth of Ladurée chocolate into them, to make matters worse.)

Our pressurized yet picture-perfect vacation had slammed on the breaks at last and we were forced to slow down, set the cameras aside, and look at the city not as time-strapped tourists but as lazy (temporary) locals.

For six extra and almost-agonizing days…

It may sound like I’m whining, because I totally am, but let me explain.

Of course there are way worse things than to be stranded in Paris. The city of lights is lovely, for sure – but nothing is lovelier than home. And when you can’t get there, and a volcano that last erupted for two whole years is standing in your way of ever returning, Paris transforms from the culture capital it normally is. It becomes, unfortunately, a cute but confining cage.

I’m just so very glad to be home again. I missed it, and you. I’ll share more stories and snapshots in the days ahead that showcase and celebrate France and all its non-cage-like best!

I’m jetting off to Paris for the first time later this spring.

I am of course very excited but also a bit concerned with how to best organize my itinerary. I don’t want to tumble into every tacky tourist trap, nor waste my precious shopping sprees in endless luxury and lady stores that will have little relevance to me and my Louis Vuitton-free lifestyle.

If any of my well-respected readers have guidance on the best sites, shops or strategies for creating the brightest of times in the City of Lights, I know your advice would be the smartest and most chic of all.

My favorite friend came back from a business trip with a mad stack of expensive, imported men’s mags for me. My favorite was the British-based BUCK.

I find the majority of higher-priced men’s mags rather irrelevant to my life. Waifs with chin-length bangs, shirtless on sand-dunes, slinking around in seven-hundred-dollar cigarette jeans just does not dial anywhere near my frequencies.

BUCK chucks away with all that junk and instead offers pages upon pages of street-style standouts, low-cost covetables, sartorial showcases of pseudo-celebs, and even retro-tinged recipes.

If I still lived across the pond I’d be certainly swapping pounds for BUCKS month after month.

Who didn’t want to hole up in a Tokyo hotel after watching Lost in Translation? The super-city’s swiftly ascending to the top of my list of vacation destinations lately, although my revised itinerary won’t allow for much moping and mooning in my high-rise suite…

I’ll be stalking the streets down below for killer vintage shops like Suntrap.

I honestly have dreams about stores that don’t exist but that I wish did. Many of them look quite like this.

To escape the intense weekend heat, I retreated to the 18th floor of the Foshay Tower – the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi.

Modeled after the Washington Monument and completed just before the stock market crash of 1929, the historical building is now the first W hotel in the Twin Cities.

The W furnishings and lighting are all nouveau nightclub glam – Carrie and Samantha chic, I guess. But the buildings original detailings remain as they were eighty years ago and were the true signals of style at the hotel.

The elevator doors, the ceiling, the original mail slot…why is nothing today fashioned with such detail and dignity?

Another retro rush of the Foshay tower is its observation deck above the thirty-second floor. To this day the tower remains one of the tallest concrete skyscrapers, second only to the Empire State Building.

Wandering around the Foshay’s narrow decks from way up above in the warm August winds was supremely cinematic.

A gigantic gorilla, second in size only to King Kong, might as well have crawled on up to paw down propellor planes.

It’s good to look at your world from a new vantage point, and to look at your world the way it once was. My hometown W was pretty perfect for doing both.

More moments from my trip to the Rockies, captured on film via my Lomo LC-A and a disposable Kodak waterproof cam.

The water-iest point of a white water raft ride.

My horse that they told me I could call José or Bullwinkle. I opted for José. He was small but so am I, sorta, so we made a good pair.

About to board a steam engine train. Approximately three hours before a table of diners at an Italian restaurant mocked me and my bandanna.

Happily packaged peanut candies. The only souvenir of my entire trip.

Floating down a lazy (man-made) river.

Most of my recent vacations have been super shopping-centric, but my seven-day trip to Colorado was really rather rugged, for a change.

I fished… (acted like it, at least)

I rode a horse… (for real)

I moved up many mountains…

I wore a bandanna without fussing over it too much, and I celebrated the return of the trucker hat…

And I forced people to take photo upon photo of me every step of the way. These were the digital (and then digitally-altered) selects. Old-fashioned film photos to follow.

I’m heading high into the mountains of Colorado for a week starting tomorrow. I’m carefully sorting out what’s worth packing as I’ve recently become a maven of traveling light. (Although multiple cameras are still a must.)

So The Treasury will temporarily shut down during my summer vacation but while I am gone you may be interested to examine the other boy-blog I recently became a contributor for: SwipeLife.

If you’re not familiar with the smashing site, it publishes the finest in men’s style news on a fabulously frequent basis. I’m really honored and excited to be on the SwipeLife team and be able to cover subjects separate from the scope of The Treasury. So check me out there, and when I’m back from my high-altitude trek, come back and check me out here too, friends.