Tuesday Travel Trivia (Week 16)

Welcome back to Gadling’s Tuesday Travel Trivia! In political news this week, the US Senate has just passed a resolution to officially re-name “Tuesday” to “Triviaday.” This seems to me to be beyond their authority, but I appreciate the gesture nonetheless.

Last week’s winner, Evan, got a perfect 10 out of 10 on some very tough questions– and he even explained how he knew the answers, which earns him a completely unnecessary bonus point.

Want to become this week’s winner? Read the following questions and leave your answers in the Comments. Come back next week– same Bat time, same Bat channel— to find out how you did. And, oh yeah, no Googling!

  1. Anthony Bourdain’s best-selling book Kitchen Confidential warned restaurant patrons from ordering fish on which day of the week?
  2. Which non-bordering country is closest to the continental United States?
  3. Which US airport has been the country’s busiest for at least the last ten years?
  4. In Spanish, what second-person, plural pronoun is used almost exclusively in Spain and not in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world?
  5. Fill in the name of a northern European city to complete the lyrics to a song from the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen: “Wonderful, wonderful __________ / Friendly old girl of a town / ‘Neath her tavern light / On this merry night /Let us clink and drink one down.”
  6. What were the names of the two main characters in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road?
  7. Which travel blog provoked a reader backlash this past summer by setting its focus on the Hamptons?
  8. If ever you’re in the mood for sitting in a chair and watching grass grow, follow the crowd to the largest public park in Paris. What is the name of this “Garden”?
  9. What’s the name of the world’s largest passenger jet?
  10. What is the significance of the order of this list of world nations? Monaco, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tuvalu, Jordan, Nauru, Congo (Kinshasa), Slovenia, Togo, Iraq, Belgium. [Thanks to Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings for this question.]

Check out the answers to last week’s questions below the fold…

  1. In the critically-acclaimed 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire, the main character, Jamal Malik, was born and raised in the slums of what Indian city? Answer: Mumbai
  2. What’s the name of Brazil’s currency? Answer: Real
  3. The government of what island nation receives about US$4 million per year from those using its internet domain suffix “.tv”? Answer: Tuvalu
  4. Anthony Burgess, best known as the author of A Clockwork Orange, also wrote a book set on the Malay Peninsula called Time for a Tiger. What popular product does that title refer to? Answer: Tiger Beer (mmm!)
  5. A UNESCO World Heritage Site frequented by travelers to Southeast Asia, the city of Luang Prabang is located in which Asian nation? Answer: Laos
  6. What TV tough guy became the youngest Brit to scale Mount Everest when he accomplished the feat at age 23? Answer: Bear Grylls (whose children, Wikipedia tells me, are named Jesse, Marmaduke, and Huckleberry.
  7. Sean Penn’s 2007 film Into the Wild was based on a book of the same title written by whom? Answer: Jon Krakauer
  8. What “The” city is the Netherlands’ third largest, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam? Answer: The Hague
  9. The symbol pictured above, found on most maps, is known as a what? Answer: Compass Rose
  10. What three-letter airport code forms a word meaning “not strict or severe; careless or negligent”? Answer: LAX