The obvious answer would be reward flights home... except that I don't ever pay for them!

I have roughly 50k miles and counting.

Short of trading them with someone else for points in another partner program, what's the best way to spend my Aeroplan miles to maximize their value? I've never used Aeroplan's rewards shop before but just did a quick search for travel certs and was disappointed by the lack of options. I was searching for hotels in Europe and mostly brought up budget options. Strange considering Starwood allows 1:1 point transfers to AC, that there's no reward partnerships to be found on the other end, don't you think? The relationship between these programs doesn't seem to be reciprocal. So what else is there? I read something about transferring mile sot gift cards... how does this work and is it a decent value? What kind of partner programs or certs are offered? I'd love to be able to use these miles for travel related rewards or dining (something akin to OpenTable certificates) but I want to be sure I'm not devaluing my miles in doing so. What options do I have?