Pick a travel gift that's practical, pleasurable and fun

I like to give gifts to family members that are: (a) unpredictable, (b) extremely usable, wearable and/or helpful, (c) a great value for me and, let's be honest, (d) something that illustrates just how cool I am for finding it.

Many travel-oriented gifts serve double duty by soothing the scores of dreadful experiences waiting in the car, on the aircraft or in a foreign city, as well as working their magic back at home.

The prescription eyeglass wearers in the family will go gaga for a pair of Fitovers Eyewear, sunglasses designed to be worn over prescription specs. Three of us in the immediate family are nearsighted, meaning we need to bring and continuously change clips or prescription sunglasses every time we want to see that mountain clearly. With Fitovers, there's no need to bring along multiple pairs of expensive eyewear.

These aren't your granny's safety glasses, either. Choose from 10 fashionable styles and rich colors that even Paris Hilton would approve of, and with the added benefit of polarized lenses providing your eyes with maximum UVA and UVB protection.

Fitovers Eyewear retail for $49.95. For details on where to buy locally, browse www.fitovers.com or call (888) 834-8872.

Holiday bows are festive on gifts, but easily torn from your aunt's luggage handle when she uses them to help her black bag stand out among the rest on the carousel.

Travel Chic, www.TravelChic.com, helps her "dress" her bags with coordinating luggage tags, handle wraps, matching tassels and even key chains in bright colors, metallics and patterns. Price points for all accessories and coordinating sets are less than $30.

You might not be able to help her with her emotional baggage, but you can at least make her next journey easier with the line's fun, funky, elegant or conservative styles of travel accessories.

If you have more wiggle room with price, consider a colorful High Sierra bag, available online and at major department stores. A Chicago-based company, High Sierra offers the versatile ATQ Carry-on Wheeled Backpack, ideal for an adventurous college student or on-the-go parent. This bag rolls on inline-skate-style wheels, splits into two separate bags, functions as a backpack with soft, padded straps and slips into an overhead compartment on the aircraft.

Have Junior fill the smaller backpack that attaches to the front of the bag and voila -- less family travel hassle. There are all kinds of other features, such as dual-side water bottle pockets and a MP3 player headphone port, too.

This is rugged luggage. High Sierra Sport Company is the official supplier to the U.S. Ski and U.S. Snowboarding Teams. Get a list of retailers at www.hssc.com.

Another local company, the mother-and-daughter-run ms. & mrs., specializes in survival kits that are both hip and practical: kits for bridesmaids, working guys and girls, college kids and, for the topic at hand, the "Shemergency" survival kit.

The small case is crammed with 24 portable solutions for beauty, fashion and personal care mishaps on the road. At $20, you spend very little to look au courant and special. Go to www.msandmrs.com for all the answers.

Your boss, mom, sis or any traveling gal in your life will be thrilled with the inexpensive ($11.99-$19.99) SpaSensials Intensive Moisturizing Socks and Gloves. It's easy to pamper paws in as little as 15 minutes by keeping moisturizers on the inside so the gloves and socks stay dry on the outside. When she's standing in line at the airport, waiting on flight delays or suffering through the red eye from New York, she slips on the gear and has spa-worthy skin in no time flat.

SpaSensials are available at www.amazon.com/spasensials and ULTA stores nationwide and www.ulta.com.

Remember when you surprised your kid with his very own disposable camera for the family vacation? That's so last century, Mom. Haven't you heard of a little thing called YouTube?

Check out the next-generation line of highly compact digital video camcorders by Pure Digital Technologies. The Flip Video Ultra Series makes it so simple to shoot and share high-quality video. Your junior videographer can record how he's enduring his dorky family on vacation, edit clips, create a custom movie, capture still photos from video and share his creation directly with his friends via e-mail or to sites such as AOL and YouTube.

The device can fit into a pocket, offers instant playback, review and delete features as well as TV-quality video, and you can later process video to DVD for your family archives. Available in 30-minute (1 GB) and 60-minute (2 GB) versions at Target, Best Buy, Toys 'R Us, Amazon.com, Costco (seasonally) and other national retailers.

Take a look at Hotslings for the new parent in your family. Couldn't you see Angelina or Brad donning this hands-free designer baby pouch that allows the baby mobility while snug and close to Mom or Dad? Waiting in airport security lines and pit stops for long car rides are much easier without the fuss of a stroller.

Hotslings, available in more than 700 stores nationwide and at www.hotslings.com, offers over 25 chic styles in various sizes ranging in price from $44 to $60.