Travia: The Ultimate Book
of Travel Trivia
by Nadine Godwin, Editor at Large, Travel Weekly

Whether you’re a veteran of hundreds of trips or a neophyte traveler. . . whether you travel around the world or around the block. . . whether you dream of or dread your next trip. . . whether you travel for pleasure or out of necessity. . . whether you’re a travel industry professional or a travel consumer. . . you’ll find your journey through these pages a voyage of unbridled discovery.

Think You're A Travel Expert? Take This Test.

1. What do the words “travel” and “travail” have in common (besides 4 letters)?

2. What is the longest place name in the world?

3. How much money did Northwest Airlines save by eliminating those little bags of pretzels?

4. What destroyed Malaysia’s first railroad?

5. Holland is famous for its tulips, but where does the word “tulip” come from?

6. How much money gets tossed into Rome’s famed Trevi Fountain each day?

7. What are the northernmost and southernmost capitals in the world?

8. In what year was the first in-flight movie shown?

9. Who was the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel?

10. What country has the world’s lowest birth rate?

If most of these questions stumped you, don’t feel too bad. It’s a big world with lots of history, lots of travelers, and lots of little-known facts squirreled away in odd corners.

Nadine Godwin, an editor at Travel Weekly, a travel trade newspaper, has been covering the world of travel for nearly 40 years and has visited 100 countries. Along the way she has poked her nose into plenty of odd corners. As she roamed the world gathering material for her stories, she made a hobby of recording offbeat facts and figures and documenting little known historical tidbits about the destinations and industries she covered.

The result of her research is a new book, Travia: The Ultimate Book of Travel Trivia (© 2008, The Intrepid Traveler, $15.95). Originally published privately for friends and colleagues in the travel industry, the book has just been issued as a 320-page trade paperback, available in bookstores everywhere. Now everyone can get in on the fun.

Godwin has arranged her tidbits of travel lore thematically in twelve chapters that take an often humorous look at little known facts about air travel, cruising, railroads, luxury hotels, world geography, and the history of travel and travelers. Open the book at random and you are as likely to encounter Kublai Khan working on an extension to China’s Grand Canal (for a thousand years the world’s longest man-made waterway), as you are to meet Richard Bangs, founder of the tour operator Mountain Travel/Sobek, who is credited with coining the term “adventure travel.”

Thanks to Godwin’s encyclopedic knowledge of the industry, readers can travel from the days when toilet facilities aboard airplanes consisted of a seat over a hole in the floor to today’s suborbital space tourism, where the toilet facilites are slightly more complicated, but for $25 million what can you expect?

As for the answers to that test, it was a snap.

Question 1: “Travel” and “travail” both derive from a Latin word for a kind of torture. Travel wasn’t always fun and, if you ask today’s road warriors, it still is no picnic.

Question 2: The world’s longest place name is not Wales’ 58-letter Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllan­tysiliogogogoch as people may think, but Tetaumatawhakatangihangakoauaotamateaurehaeaturip­ukapihimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuaakitanarahu in New Zealand, which in this version boasts 92 letters. (Surprisingly, locals use two shorter versions.)

Question 3: Northwest saved $2 million a year by sparing us all the empty calories in those 12-pretzel foil packets.

Question 4: Malaysia’s first railroad, built in 1869, was done in by ants. (It was made of wood!)

Question 5: The word “tulip” comes from a Turkish word meaning “turban,” which nicely describes the flower’s shape.

Question 6: Forget three coins in the fountain — some 500 euros are tossed into Trevi Fountain every day!

Question 7: The northernmost capital is Iceland’s Reykjavik; New Zealand’s Wellington is the southernmost.

Question 8: The first in-flight movie was shown on April 7, 1925, on a flight between London and Paris. It was “The Lost World,” a silent precursor to “Jurassic Park.”

Question 9: The first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel was Anna Edson Taylor, an impoverished former school teacher from Bay City, Michigan, who hoped the stunt would net her some cash. It didn’t.

Question 10: Vatican City has an official birth rate of zero.

Many more answers to questions you never thought to ask can be found in Travia: The Ultimate Book of Travel Trivia, which has an additional attraction not yet mentioned.

No tests!

Filled with fascinating facts and hidden truths, Travia by Nadine Godwin makes the ideal traveling companion for your next getaway! Nadine was interviewed on our online radio show, Vacation Station on October  17, 2008. To listen to the entire, unedited show, please click here. To listen to Nadine's interview, please double click on the Play Button below.