I have a confession. I’ve spent more hours reading about the Cannes Film Festival than any reasonable person should admit to. The red carpet, the beach screenings at dusk, the idea of sitting in a dark room on the French Riviera watching a film that nobody outside that room has ever seen before. It gets under your skin if you let it.

The 79th edition runs May 12 through May 23, 2026, and this year’s lineup is shaping up to be one of the strongest in recent memory. Park Chan-wook is presiding over the jury. New work from Spielberg, Malick, Joel Coen, Almodóvar, and Iñárritu is expected in competition. And if you’ve ever thought about making the trip, the window to plan is right now.

I put together a full guide on EZtravelZ covering everything a first-timer needs to know, from how to actually get into a screening without industry credentials, to where to eat when every restaurant within a mile of La Croisette is packed, to the day trips along the Riviera that turn a festival visit into a proper journey.

Read the full Cannes guide on EZtravelZ →

Three Things Most People Don’t Know About Cannes

You don’t need a badge to see a film. Every evening at nightfall, classic and cult films screen for free on Macé Beach, right next to the Palais des Festivals. The setting is the Mediterranean at dusk. Arrive an hour early and bring something to sit on. This alone is worth the trip.

The sidewalk sign trick is real. Film professionals receive ticket quotas for each screening. If they don’t use them, their future allocation gets reduced. So they hand them to strangers. People stand outside the Palais with handwritten signs asking for a spare invitation, and it works more often than you’d expect. Patience, a good sign, and genuine interest in the film go a long way.

The best meal in Cannes isn’t on La Croisette. It’s at Aux Bons Enfants on Rue Meynadier, where the Giorsetti family has been cooking since 1935, sourcing directly from Marché Forville every morning. Cash only, no reservations. You walk in and ask. The Provençal stews and sole meunière are the kind of food that makes you forget the festival is even happening, which might be the highest compliment a restaurant in Cannes can receive.

Worth Booking Before You Go

If you’re building a trip around the festival, the coast surrounding Cannes is extraordinary and moves fast during festival week. The best guides and boats go first.

The Monaco and Èze Small Group Day Trip is the one I’d prioritize. The medieval village of Èze perched 430 meters above the sea, paired with Monaco’s Prince’s Palace, the cathedral where Grace Kelly is buried, and the Monte Carlo Casino. It’s about 40 minutes from Cannes and feels like stepping into a different century.

The Lérins Islands Private Boat Tour is the antidote to festival sensory overload. Four hours offshore with a bilingual skipper, snorkeling gear, and the kind of quiet that simply does not exist anywhere on the mainland during May. Île Saint-Honorat has a working Cistercian monastery where monks have been making wine and lavender honey since the 5th century.

Both are bookable through links in the full guide.

Explore the full Cannes guide, with all tour and hotel links →

This Week’s Cinematic Travel Pick

If Cannes isn’t on your calendar this year but you still want to plan around a festival, the full article on EZtravelZ also covers six festivals worth flying for in 2026, from Tribeca in June through the New York Film Festival in October. Telluride in September, with no advance programming and a Colorado mountain setting at altitude, is the one that keeps pulling me in.

That’s it for this one. If you’re thinking about Cannes, or any of the festivals on the 2026 calendar, the full guide has everything you need to start planning. Hotels, restaurants, logistics, day trips, and the honest truth about what the experience actually feels like when you’re standing there.

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Show up at Dog Beach at noon in late spring and you’ll find a strip of wet sand that barely fits two people side by side, let alone a crew of Labradors trying to invent a new sport. Show up at 7:30 in the morning with low tide pulling the Pacific back toward Catalina, and you get this wide, shimmering playground where dogs do their best work. The difference between a great day and a mediocre one is about four hours and a glance at the NOAA tide chart the night before

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That’s what I wanted to bake into the Ocean Beach guide found at eztravelz.com, because pet travel writing usually skips the practical part and goes straight to “dogs welcome here!” cheerleading. If you’ve actually tried to plan a day around a dog, you know that “allowed” and “workable” aren’t the same thing.

The piece walks the neighborhood from north to south, starts with coffee, ends at a brewery, and covers the off-leash zones, the cliff walk that’s best on a long line, the tide pools your dog will love and slightly mistreat, and the four spots where the patio staff will bring your pup a bowl of water without you having to ask.

Fiesta Island is the one nobody tells you about. A whole island of off-leash running room, and almost nobody outside the locals knows it’s there. Going here first, before Dog Beach, sets up the day correctly. Your dog arrives at the sand already worked through the zoomies, which means you get a real walk instead of a cardio emergency.

Newbreak Coffee closes at 2pm. This surprises people. If you want a pup cup and a lavender latte in the morning, plan your order of operations around that, not around the brewery.

Sunset Cliffs is technically on-leash. Obey that rule. The bluffs have small unmarked drop-offs that do not forgive a 50-foot long line and a distracted handler. I added a whole note about that in the guide because I’d rather be careful than cute about it.

Lunch option include the awesome Mike’s Taco Club. At Mike’s Taco Club, they serve coastal flavor with a kick: fresh tortillas, sizzling fillings, and beachside favorites that hit every time. From breakfast burritos to fish tacos, it’s all here, wrapped and ready. And if you’re craving pizza try Pizza Port Ocean Beach for one of their original pizzas paired perfectly with one their famous brews and grogs.

Ocean Beach Brewery’s rooftop faces due west. You close the day with the sun going down behind your dog’s head while you drink an IPA that was brewed a block from where you’re sitting. That’s the version of dog travel I actually believe in.

Bring the doggie along and check out Ocean Beach Walking Tour – Discover San Diego’s Sun-kissed Rebel. Step into the laid-back, rebellious heart of San Diego. Ocean Beach (OB) is where barefoot surfers, punk rock spirit, and salty sea air collide. Join our local guides on a one-of-a-kind walking tour through vibrant murals, haunted bars, indie record stores, and hidden pirate ruins. You’ll hear tales of shipwrecks, odd sightings, surfer legends, and underground music icons like Jewel who got her start right here.

Ocean Beach San Diego Walking Tour Experience

The full guide is live at eztravelz.com, There is an interactive map, tide-timing notes, and all four patio recommendations with hours and pet policies already vetted. Plus a whole bunch more, read the rest of the story at eztravelz.com.

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The first stop is the Mormon Fort and the Neon Museum, which I’d encourage you to plan as a single evening. The Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort at 500 E. Washington Ave. is the oldest standing structure in Nevada, built in 1855, costs about a dollar to visit, and carries a quiet history that feels remarkable being surrounded by a modern city. The Neon Museum is less than ten minutes away and costs more, around thirty dollars, but moving from an 1855 adobe remnant to a graveyard of the city’s most iconic signs at dusk is one of the genuinely memorable things Las Vegas offers. Book the Neon Museum in advance at neonmuseum.org, it sells out on weekends.

Then there’s the Fremont Street Experience, which I’ll be honest about before selling it too hard. It is free, it is spectacular, and it is not always appropriate for children or adults who prefer their evenings on the quieter side. What happens overhead is the thing. The Canopy, officially called Vegas’ Neon Sky, stretches 1,375 feet above the pedestrian mall and is the largest LED display in the world. Every night starting at six, every building beneath it goes dark and the ceiling comes alive in six-minute synchronized light and music shows on the hour. Three stages run free live concerts every single night of the year. Come after dark and don’t tell whoever you bring about the canopy in advance. Let them look up on their own.

And then the Strip, which earns its place on this list not for the gambling or the spectacle but for two specific experiences that happen to be completely free and genuinely world-class.

The first is inside the Bellagio. Stop in the lobby before you do anything else and look up. What’s covering the ceiling is a work called “Fiori di Como,”

a permanent installation of more than two thousand hand-blown glass flowers covering two thousand square feet, created by Dale Chihuly, arguably the most celebrated glass artist alive. It is one of the significant pieces of public art in the American West and most of the people walking beneath it are looking at their phones. From there, walk to the Conservatory and Botanical Gardens just inside the main entrance.

A team of over one hundred horticulturists changes it completely several times a year and the seasonal installations are genuinely stunning. None of it costs a dollar. Walk in, look up, move through the conservatory, and walk back out.

Cross the pedestrian bridge into Caesars Palace and head to the Forum Shops, which are worth experiencing for their architecture and atmosphere regardless of whether you intend to buy anything.

The sky ceiling introduced in 1992 was designed by Sky Art by Karen Kristin, a painted faux sky that cycles through dawn to dusk lighting and creates the convincing illusion of an open-air Italian piazza overhead. It was genuinely pioneering when it opened and it still works. As you wind through the shops, keep an eye out for the Fall of Atlantis show near the Cheesecake Factory. It runs Thursday through Monday, hourly from noon to 8pm, free, and takes about seven minutes. The animatronics have been there since 1992 and look precisely like animatronics that have been there since 1992, which is either charming or alarming depending on your constitution. Nine-foot talking statues, fire, water effects, a twenty-foot winged dragon. Kids tend to love it. Right beside it is a 50,000-gallon saltwater aquarium with sharks and stingrays that is a genuinely lovely, calming stop after all the pyrotechnics. Both are free. Both are easy to miss if you don’t know to look for them.

The full piece covering all experiences is on EZtravelZ now.

[Read : Six or More Free (Or Nearly Free) Things to Do in Las Vegas, That You Need to Know!]

A tip: The Fall of Atlantis runs Thursday through Monday only. If you’re planning a midweek visit to the Forum Shops, check the schedule before building your afternoon around it. The sky ceiling and aquarium are there every day regardless.

A place worth knowing: The Bellagio Conservatory has dark dates several times a year when the seasonal installation is being changed over. Check the hotel’s website before visiting if the conservatory is your main reason for going.

Two Strip experiences, one downtown corridor, one evening pairing that covers seventeen centuries of Las Vegas history in a single afternoon. All of it free or nearly free. More from the valley soon.

Until then, EZtravelZ

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I’ve described this day to people and watched their faces go through the same sequence every time. Mild skepticism, then genuine interest, then the particular look of someone recalculating what they thought they knew about a place.

Here’s the day. You start at Gilcrease Orchard in the northwest valley, a sixty-acre working farm that has been here since 1920, picking your own peaches or apples or whatever is in season, paying by the pound, and eating apple cider donuts made from fruit grown on the same property.

Then you cross the street to Gilcrease Nature Sanctuary, a nonprofit rescue home to more than five hundred animals including parrots, peacocks, miniature horses, alpacas, emus, and cockatoos that will hold an actual conversation with you if you give them the chance. Then you drive less than ten minutes south to Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs, where spring-fed ponds sit under cottonwood trees and peacocks wander the paths with the complete indifference of animals that know they live somewhere beautiful.

The whole day costs you somewhere around fifteen to twenty dollars including entry fees and whatever produce you pick. It takes about five hours. And it exists entirely outside the version of Las Vegas most people ever see.

The full write-up with hours, pricing, what to order, and what to wear is up now on EZtravelZ.

Read the Full Article: Six or More Free (Or Nearly Free) Things to Do in Las Vegas, That You Need to Know!

Three Quick Finds This Issue

A tip: Gilcrease Orchard runs on a seasonal schedule and specific crops change week to week. Check their website before you go and arrive early, the apple cider donuts sell out and the best produce goes fast on weekends.

A place worth knowing: Floyd Lamb Park sits on ground where Ice Age fossils including mammoths and giant ground sloths were recovered from the Tule Springs wetlands. The peacocks don’t know this and wouldn’t care if they did.

Something to watch: PBS Outdoor Nevada did an episode on Gilcrease Orchard that covers the history of the property beautifully. Worth twenty minutes before you go.

Next issue we’re heading to three more corners of the city, a downtown evening pairing that covers seventeen centuries of Las Vegas history, the largest LED display in the world, and a free Chihuly glass ceiling hiding inside the Bellagio that most people walk under without ever looking up.

Until then EZTravelZ

CURRENT STATUS — MARCH 202

The partial government shutdown has been in effect since February 14, 2026, and it affects only the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that funds and oversees the TSA. Over 300 TSA agents have resigned since the shutdown began, and hundreds more have called out due to financial hardship. Some airports are seeing wait times stretch to two and three hours. Spring break travel has made conditions at certain hubs significantly worse.

WHY AIRPORT LINES ARE SO LONG

TSA agents are classified as essential workers, which means they are required to show up even during a government shutdown. The problem is that “required to show up” and “actually showing up without a paycheck” are two very different things for people facing rent payments and grocery bills.

The shutdown specifically affects the Department of Homeland Security. Air traffic controllers and other FAA workers are still being paid normally, so your flight itself is not in jeopardy. The bottleneck is almost entirely at the security checkpoint. Some airports have been hit hard, while others are surprisingly smooth. The disruption is uneven, unpredictable, and unlikely to resolve itself before spring break travel peaks.

THE THREE PROGRAMS THAT CAN SAVE YOUR TRIP

TSA PRECHECK — Fully Operational

Cost: $77 to $85 for a 5-year membership | Available at 200+ airports | Works with 90+ airlines

Pre-Check is the foundation. Once enrolled, you pass through a dedicated lane where you keep your shoes on, your belt buckled, and your laptop in your bag. The lines move significantly faster than the standard checkpoint, even with reduced staffing. Your boarding pass will display the Pre-Check logo when it’s active, and that’s your green light.

How to sign up:

- Apply online at tsa.gov, then visit an enrollment center in person for fingerprints and a photo

- You’ll receive a Known Traveler Number (KTN) once approved

- Add your KTN to every airline profile and every future booking

- Kids can move through the Pre-Check lane with you at no extra charge

- Credit cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve and American Express Platinum often reimburse the enrollment fee as a statement credit, so check your card benefits before paying out of pocket

CLEAR+ — Fully Operational (and Currently Offering 3 Months Free)

Regular cost: $209 per year | Military and government: $125 per year | Kids 17 and under: Free | Available at 60+ airports https://www.clearme.com/tsa-precheck

CLEAR is a private service, which means the government shutdown does not touch it at all. Instead of showing your ID at the security entrance, you scan your boarding pass and step up to a biometric pod that reads your face or eyes to confirm your identity. You then walk straight to the front of the line at the TSA checkpoint.

For very frequent travelers, or anyone flying through a notoriously congested airport right now, combining CLEAR+ with TSA Pre-Check is the most effective one-two punch available.

THE 3-MONTH FREE TRIAL OFFE

Right now, new CLEAR+ members can try the service completely free for three months. If the discount does not apply automatically at checkout, use promo code PRODGSB261 to lock in the offer.

You will need to provide a credit card to sign up, but it will not be charged until the trial period ends. After you enter your personal details and payment information, the checkout screen will show $0 owed.

Who qualifies: The offer is for new CLEAR+ members only, who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, 18 or older, with a valid government-issued photo ID.

What happens after 3 months: Once your trial ends, you will be automatically enrolled in the full annual membership at $209 per year for adults, plus $125 for each adult family member added to your account. Kids 17 and under are always free.

THE CANCELLATION POLICY

This is the part to pay close attention to, because the auto-renewal is easy to miss.

If you are in your trial period, you will not be charged as long as you cancel before the last day of your free 3 months. The moment that deadline passes, your card gets billed for the full year automatically.

If you cancel within the first 14 days of being charged for a paid membership, you will receive a full refund for that term. However, you will no longer be able to use the CLEAR airport lanes from the date of cancellation onward.

If you cancel more than 14 days after being charged, your account will be scheduled not to renew at the end of that paid term. You keep access through the end of the year you paid for.

How to cancel: Log into your account at my.clearme.com and select “Change Renewal Settings” or “Cancel.” You can also reach their support team by email at memberservices@clearme.com.

The single most important thing you can do the day you sign up is set a calendar reminder for the end of your three-month trial. That one small step is what separates people who love this deal from people who feel burned by it.

GLOBAL ENTRY — Partially Restored, Proceed Carefully

Cost: $120 for a 5-year membership | Includes TSA Pre-Check | Available at 61 U.S. airports

Global Entry is designed for international travelers returning to the United States. It lets you skip the customs processing line and use automated kiosks instead. After being suspended entirely in late February, it officially reopened on March 11th, but some kiosks remain offline at select airports.

If you are flying internationally, plan for possible delays on your return and build extra time into the back end of your trip. New enrollment interviews were also paused during the shutdown, so new applicants may face a backlog before their membership becomes active.

SIX THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU LEAVE HOME

1. Arrive much earlier than you normally would.

Atlanta and New Orleans are currently advising travelers to arrive at least three hours before departure. Even if your home airport seems calm, this is not the moment to cut it close.

2. Check your airport’s social media the morning of your flight.

Many major airports are posting real-time wait time updates on X (formerly Twitter). Search your airport by name and look at their feed before you leave the house. This 60-second habit can save you an enormous amount of stress.

3. Skip the TSA app for now.

Because of the shutdown, the app is not being updated regularly with accurate wait times. Stick to your airport’s direct social media channels or website instead.

4. Make sure Pre-Check is printed on your boarding pass.

This is the single most overlooked step. If it is not showing up, locate your Known Traveler Number and add it to your airline profile before you leave for the airport. Trying to sort this out at the security line is too late.

5. Monitor your flight status separately from security.

Security backups can push into departure delays even when your airline is operating normally. Keep an eye on your flight number throughout the morning so you are never caught off guard.

6. Check your credit card benefits before paying out of pocket.

Cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve and American Express Platinum offer reimbursement credits for TSA Pre-Check and Global Entry enrollment. If you hold one of these cards, enrollment may cost you nothing.

A NOTE ON PATIENCE

Not every airport is in chaos right now. Some are running without notable delays, while others have become genuinely difficult. The disruption is uneven and shifts from day to day, which is exactly why checking conditions specific to your departure city the morning of your flight is the single most useful habit you can build during this period.

The TSA agents working those lines are doing so without pay. They are showing up because they are required to, and many are facing real financial strain in the process. A little patience and a kind word go a long way in a stressful environment. The shutdown is a political situation, not a personal one, and the people at the checkpoint are caught in the middle of it just like you are.

Prepare early, know your programs, and leave yourself more time than you think you need. The adventure waiting on the other side of security is worth the extra effort to get there without a crisis.

• The very first Academy Awards ceremony lasted exactly 15 minutes. The 1929 banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel was a private dinner for about 270 guests, and the winners had already been announced publicly three months before the event even took place. No suspense. No sealed envelopes. Just dinner, a quick handoff of some statues, and everyone went home before their dessert got cold.

• Barry Fitzgerald was nominated twice for the exact same performance in the same year. At the 1944 Oscars, Fitzgerald was on the ballot for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for his role in Going My Way. He lost Best Actor to Bing Crosby, who was also in Going My Way, but won Best Supporting Actor that same night. The Academy quietly closed that loophole afterward, and it has never happened since.

• The sealed envelope tradition exists because a newspaper ruined everything. Before the 1940 ceremony honoring Gone with the Wind, the Los Angeles Times published all the winners in an evening edition before the show even started. Stars like Clark Gable were finding out they lost while still on their way to the event. The Academy responded by switching to sealed envelopes delivered only at the moment of announcement, a practice that has been in place ever since.

• Only one person has ever legally sold their Oscar statuette at auction. Since 1950, winners must sign an agreement offering their statue back to the Academy for $1 before selling it to anyone else. But Harold Russell, who won Best Supporting Actor in 1947 for The Best Years of Our Lives, won his award three years before that rule existed. In 1993, he sold his statuette at auction for $60,500 to help pay for his wife’s medical expenses. The Academy, to its credit, did not try to stop him.

• Katharine Hepburn won four Oscars and attended the ceremony exactly once. She holds the all-time record for Best Actress wins, but she skipped almost every ceremony entirely, believing the competitive nature of the awards ran counter to the spirit of filmmaking. Her single appearance came in 1974, not to collect an award, but to present one. She walked onstage and immediately joked that she was surprised no one had shouted “it’s about time.”

The 98th Academy Awards are live tonight from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Conan O’Brien hosts for the second year running, and Sinners arrives with a record-breaking 16 nominations. Whatever happens tonight, the history behind this ceremony is always the better story.

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The first time I understood what it meant to really be somewhere, I was standing in a place that should have been ordinary and felt anything but. That feeling, the one where a location reaches through you and changes something, is the reason EZTravelZ exists. And it is exactly the feeling waiting for you at 7,800 feet in the Colorado Rockies.

Welcome to The EZTravelZ Letter. This is where the journey starts.

This Issue: The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, Colorado

In late September of 1974, Stephen King checked into an enormous, nearly empty mountain hotel on the last night of its season. The dining room chairs were already stacked upside down. Pre-recorded orchestra music played into a room with no one in it. He and his wife were the only guests. They went upstairs to the only room that still had sheets on the bed.

Room 217.

That night King dreamed of his three-year-old son being chased through the hotel corridors by a fire hose that had come alive. He woke in a panic, lit a cigarette, stared out at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette burned down he had the bones of The Shining in his head.

The Stanley Hotel did not become legendary because of that novel. It was already legendary. The hauntings here predate King’s visit by decades. The housekeeper who survived a gas explosion in Room 217 in 1911 and reportedly never quite left. F.O. Stanley himself, still spotted in the hotel bar late at night by staff who cannot account for him. Children’s laughter on the fourth floor where no children are staying. A locked closet door on the Ghost Hunters television crew that swung open by itself at three in the morning.

The full story, the history, the ghosts, the two film adaptations, and exactly how to plan your stay, is live now on EZTravelZ.

Read: The Stanley Hotel — Where the Nightmare Became the Novel

Three Quick Finds

A tip. Room 217, now called the Stephen King Suite, cannot be booked online. You have to call the hotel directly at (970) 577-4000. October dates fill months in advance. If that is your target, the time to call is now, not when the leaves start turning.

A place. The town of Estes Park sits at the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park and earns a full weekend on its own. Elk wander the streets at dawn and dusk in autumn with complete indifference to traffic. Build at least two nights into any Stanley itinerary. One to explore. One to listen.

A hidden gem. The Stanley added a hedge maze to the front grounds in 2015 as a nod to Kubrick’s film adaptation. Here is the detail worth knowing: King’s original novel featured topiary animals, not a maze. The hedge maze is technically a tribute to the version Stephen King publicly criticized. The hotel is entirely aware of this irony and seems to enjoy it.

This is what The EZTravelZ Letter does every other week. One deep dive into a destination worth the journey. Three finds you can use immediately. Six categories of passion-driven travel, and wherever yours lives, we will find our way there together.

If this issue found you through a recommendation, welcome. You can read everything we have published so far at eztravelz.com.

See you on the road.

Blakeo EZTravelZ