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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Liz Boulter and Gavin McOwan

What on Earth: the bumper 2023 travel quiz

Travel quiz composite

The year in travel: part one

1 Where did Rishi Sunak, below, go on his “first proper family holiday” for years this summer?

2 Name two of the seven countries not invited to King Charles’s coronation in May.

3 Which country finally loosened Covid travel restrictions and reopened its borders in January?

4 In April, which UK city became the first to impose a tourist tax?

Idris Elba breaks ‘Flying Mile’ UK land speed record

5 Which seven-mile-long Welsh beach became the location for a new Museum of Speed which celebrates the many land-speed records made here, including one by actor Idris Elba, above, in a Bentley Continental GT?

Films of the year

Boyd Holbrook in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Boyd Holbrook in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Photograph: Alamy

6 Which city stood in for New York in the filming of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

7 Cannes jury prizewinner EO, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, follows the travels across Europe of what four-legged creature?

8 Name the romcom set on the streets of Peckham and Brixton, south London.

9 Sam Mendes’s love letter to the movies, Empire of Light, starring Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward, was set in which English seaside resort?

Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon
Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon. Photograph: Alamy

10 Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon was set and filmed in which US state?

Flags of the world

11 What is the most common colour on national flags?

12 What do the flags of Monaco, Indonesia, Poland, Peru and Austria have in common?

13 Name one of the two countries that have a map on their flag.

flag on pole blue sky

14 Which country reintroduced its original national flag in 2011 (pictured above), replacing an all-green flag with no symbol, which was used from 1977 until 2011?

flag on a clear blue sky

15 Which country’s flag (pictured above) includes, maybe appropriately, an image of a shipwreck?

Countries

16 What old-fashioned system do Myanmar, Liberia and the United States share?

17 Why might a Brit be surprised on hearing the national anthem of Liechtenstein?

18 Which country has the highest per capita tea consumption?

Black coffee in white mug

19 And what about coffee?

20 Which South American country is named after an ancient European port city?

Towns and cities

Eurovision Fans
Fans at Eurovision 2023 in Liverpool. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

21 Where will the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest be held?

22 Which Asian megacity and capital was founded in the mid-19th century by a group of Chinese tin miners?

23 Rural Bundanoon, New South Wales, was the first town to pass a planet-friendly law that has been copied by many cities worldwide. What was it?

24 What is carried in a crowdfunded pipeline running under the Belgian city of Bruges?

Historic city centre Brazil

25 Brazil has had three capital cities since its first government was formed in 1549 (the first of the three is pictured above) – can you name them?

American trivia

Utah, Glen Canyon national recreation area

26 Utah, picured above, Wyoming and Colorado are neighbours, but they are also the only three US states that have what?

27 Name the only US state that ends with three vowels.

28 And the one that starts with two.

29 What is special about the islands of Big and Little Diomede? Clue: only one of them is in the US.

30 What happens if you drive south from Detroit city centre across the Detroit river?

The year in travel: part two

31 A second world war bomb exploded in which English seaside town in February?

32 Home to hundreds of stray cats, Largo di Torre Argentina in Rome was opened to the public this summer. What fateful March event is it the site of?

Greek island beach

33 On which Greek island (pictured above) were 19,000 tourists evacuated out of the path of wildfires in July?

34 The world’s longest railway tunnel was damaged by a derailment in August. What is its name?

35 Before the coronation, King Charles made his first state visit abroad as monarch – to which country?

Passed away while living away

Composite of celebs for travel quiz

36-40 You probably know where these singers and revolutionaries were born, but can you name the countries where they died?

Answers

1 California 2 Russia, Belarus, Iran, Myanmar, Syria, Afghanistan and Venezuela 3 China 4 Manchester 5 Pendine Sands 6 Glasgow 7 A donkey 8 Rye Lane 9 Margate 10 Oklahoma 11 Red 12 They are all red and white 13 Cyprus or Kosovo 14 Libya 15 Bermuda 16 They use imperial measurements 17 It has the same tune as God Save the King 18 Turkey 19 Finland 20 Venezuela 21 Malmö 22 Kuala Lumpur 23 It banned single-use plastic water bottles 24 Beer 25 Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília 26 All their borders are straight lines 27 Hawaii 28 Iowa 29 They are less than three miles apart but Big Diomede is in Russia and on the other side of the international date line 30 You enter Canada 31 Great Yarmouth 32 Julius Caesar’s assassination 33 Rhodes 34 Gotthard, Switzerland 35 Germany (Berlin) 36 Mexico (Leon Trotsky) 37 France (Jim Morrison) 38 the US (Bob Marley) 39 Bolivia (Che Guevara) 40 Switzerland (Tina Turner)

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