Here’s to breaking new ground in the new year. May all your travels be safe and illuminating. Cheers!

From Urban Outfitters’ post-holiday sale, online only division. Contemplate your next trip every wash-up.

Briggs & Riley is known for its comprehensive warranty, covering airline and consumer mishaps of all kinds when others don’t. Another distinctive feature: The externally housed pull-out handle, which allows items to pack flat in the main compartment. Love the interior shoe pockets and the exterior hideaway mesh cargo net that unfolds from that little smile on the bottom of the bag there.

A credit card-sized paper and pen combo to have at the ready since cocktail napkins rumple and matchbooks are no longer a standard free souvenir.

I inherited a blue version of this from my best friend, who left it in my care when she left for the Peace Corps. She returned, yet never asked for it back because she knows I love it. I really do. So solid, so gleaming, it reminds me of her, of our wanderings together, and that there’s a world full of travels waiting, always.

Good idea: Some basic hotel comforts ready in your guest bedroom.

I am so friggen sick of my hairbrush bristles getting caught in the netting of my suitcase pockets. Not to mention the lint accumulation. Oh, the lint! Looks like there’s no reason I should continue to suffer so.

Not solely for pirates. Also: golfers, bird-watchers, boaters, concert-goers, hikers and such. Collapses to 5.5 inches.

A passport kilt. Of sorts.

Season bland road food to perfection.