Throw a travel trivia game night that your friends and family will love with these ideas and inspiration. While the pandemic keeps us from travelling and attending pub trivia – two of our favourite hobbies – we combined these concepts for an entertaining night in.
A travel trivia night makes a romantic, couples evening but can be easily extended to bigger family, friend or housemate groups. My goal was to make our travel trivia tournament minimal fuss and maximum fun – here’s how I went about it.
Table of contents
Travel trivia questions
Of course, there is no travel trivia without questions and answers. There are a variety of affordable travel trivia card sets on the market, but not all are created equal. Here are a few of the ones we’ve used and what we thought of them:
Travel Trivia cards by Ridley’s Games
There are four sets of 80 questions in this series, each with different themes: Road Trips, Foodie Holidays, World Tour and City Getaways that come in well-designed, rigid cardboard boxes. Questions are provided with multiple choice answers and you can play different rules for different difficulty levels as detailed on the box.
Pros: Good quality multiple-choice questions with a variety of sub-topics covering geography and culture. You can play different levels depending on who you are playing with or if you want to play again at a later date. Cards are well-designed, with large, easy-to-read text.
Cons: The Road Trips questions are North America and USA-centric, so if you haven’t travelled the US by road, I suggest selecting one of the other themes instead.
Travel Trivia by Gift Republic
Set of 100, palm-sized, rectangular cards packaged in a lightweight cardboard box. The set includes a combination of single-answer and multiple-choice questions.
Pros: Cards are neatly designed with large, easily read text. Questions cover culture and geography and globally.
Cons: Very inconsistent. Some questions are multiple-choice but the majority are not. Some of the questions are also vague or even incorrect. For example: Q. What is Tabbouleh? A. An Israeli salad of fresh herbs and bulgur wheat. Real answer: Syrian/Lebanese salad made from fresh herbs, tomato, onion and bulgur wheat.
After Dinner Amusements Travel Trivia by Chronicle Books
Set of 50 single-answer trivia questions on geography and culture. Each answer comes with a relevant fact/further explanation. Small, square cards packaged in a lightweight metal tin.
Pros: Very compact and tin provides some water-proofing.
Cons: Card design needs improvement for accessibility. They are small, with a very slippery laminate which can make them hard to hold. Questions and answers are designated by colour which is difficult for colour blind people or even if you’ve just had a few too many glasses of wine i.e. it is easy to accidentally start reading the answer out loud, instead of the question.
Also, some answers are incorrect e.g. Q. What language has the most native speakers? A. Chinese. Real Answer: Mandarin, “Chinese” is not a language and there are several dialects spoken in China.
There are a variety of similar travel trivia card games available online such as Gentlemen’s Hardware USA Road Trip Trivia, Games Room Travel Quiz and World Card Series with card sets by continent, however, I haven’t used them personally and can’t comment on their quality.
Travel trivia scoreboard
To add to the spirit of friendly competition, I created a scoreboard using this letterboard. We played a tournament-style format, to extend out the fun over a few nights. Each set of cards was played as a round, on different nights. The scoreboard was used to keep a tally of the winners from each round until we arrived at a tournament winner.
Game night food ideas
As I mentioned, my goal was to keep preparation, serving and clean up to an absolute minimum so there were few distractions with maximum relaxation and fun.
A charcuterie board or antipasto platter is simple, sophisticated and the perfect trivia companion. You and your guests can graze between questions, there are no hot items going cold and no one has to get up from the table to cook or serve.
Our antipasto platter included cold meats, nuts, pâté, cheese, marinated olives, sun-dried tomatoes and water crackers. You might also include the following:
- Roasted or grilled vegetables like red peppers, asparagus or eggplant.
- Crudités such as carrot, cucumber and/or celery sticks.
- Pesto, tapenade or dips.
- Fresh bread such as a small baguette.
- Fruit that is peeled and sliced or easy to eat as-is, like strawberries and grapes.
- Garnish with stems of fresh herbs, for example, stems of rosemary.
Ensure you make up your platter on a board or tray that you don’t mind your guests using a knife or utensils on. It could be a large wooden cutting board or a marble platter like the one I used. Don’t forget to provide appropriate knives for your cheeses and pâté. Bread-plates and salad forks are all your guest will probably need, along with plenty of napkins.
We had recently been gifted a lovely bottle of wine which we sipped on our travel trivia game night. Wine is an easy self-serve and perfect accompaniment to a charcuterie board, taste-wise. It’s not necessary for anyone to mix drinks throughout the night and there is no ice required. However, if you prefer spirits: gin and tonic pairs well generally, while bourbon and scotch both work well with smokey flavoured meats and cheeses.
Have a super fun travel trivia night. I hope this delights and entertains you and your friends/family during this extended period at home.
Peace, love & inspiring travel,
Madam ZoZo
