Category: Contest

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

From the big red rig, the schoolbus, the large green highway signs, the Holiday Inn Express/Best Western/Residence Inn Motel 6 under construction, the railroad tracks by the river and the gently rolling tree covered hills, one can only conclude that this could be anywhere on the entire fucking Interstate Highway System. Nice one. Wild guess at somewhere near Breezewood, PA.

Another:

Well, it's the United States if that highway is any indication, and there are a lot of rivers that are about that size and flow through hilly areas, but that river looks really low, and the grass is all yellow. This has to be in a part of the country affected by bad drought, so that eliminates eastern rivers that flow through areas like that, such as the Monongahela or the Susquehanna. I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that we're looking at the Arkansas River, and it's flowing through Fort Smith in this photo.

Another:

Blind guess, but the river is very low and not very wide.  The walls and berm across the way (built by Army Corps of Engineers) suggest being very close to town.  But the picture doesn't show the town, so a place big enough to have a road that size.  But not a big place. Hills in the background.  Why not Pine Bluff, Arkansas?

Another:

I am not the type to go hunting through the interwebs for clues, but I have driven this way for years and years. I live in MA, my husband is from Rochester, NY, so we spend a lot of time on I-90. My son adores the trains when they show up along the CSX line there on the east side of the canal. It's a relatively boring ride, but the trains help. If I had to guess, I'd say this is around the Fultonville/Fonda exit. Pretty quiet part of the world.

Another:

This is driving me crazy. It looks so familiar but in such a vague way. My gut says somewhere in NW Arkansas/NE Oklahoma/SW Missouri, but I'm so terrible at this contest generally. Hopefully I won't look like a total fool because the green interstate signs and the yellow school bus make me feel quite confident it's the USA. I'm going to guess that's I-44 (Will Rogers Turnpike) crossing the Verdigris River near Catoosa, Oklahoma, in Rogers County. Please don't make fun of me if that's really Venezuela or something.

Not Venezuela. Nor something:

My first thought, on looking at the picture, was that it looked like Afghanistan – the banks of pale brown dirt beside a river running a bit dry, the green hills, the high quality ring road built by Chinese contractors. Then I looked more closely. There seem to be a number of pretty good roads here. And a train in the foreground. And a yellow school bus. I'm still sending in my first guess – I'm going with Pul-e-Khumri in Baghlan Province as you go over some small rivers after descending from the Salang Pass traveling from Kabul up to Kunduz. But rather than hoping for a free book, I'm gunning for one of those top positions in the Tuesday reveal, where you put the Wrongest Answers. Was anybody more wrong than me?

You win that contest. Another:

Not positive about Winona, Minnesota, but I'd be shocked if that wasn't the Mississippi bluffs. If that's highway 61, keep going north towards Duluth and you've got the Bob Dylan song!

On the right track. A reader nails it:

Here we see the lower bend of the Minnesota River, looking westward or possibly west-northwestward from somewhere on the north side of downtown Mankato, Minnesota.  That wasn't so hard after all, now, was it. No, not sober anyways.  The road in the picture is US highway 169, MN state highway 60 & 30, (>>>"SPEED LIMIT 50"<<<).  A glance at the droughtfully low water in the river shows the reinforcement of its banks with a lot of quartzite, probably hauled from quarries up to 200 miles from the west.  This bend in the river is where the Minnesota begins its turn northward to St. Paul, where it flows into the Mississippi.

Mankato it is. Another:

One glance and I thought "Mankato," a city in which I've spent a total of maybe five hours of my life – once to take a kid to watch the Minnesota Vikings train, once to see my partner give the sermon at the Unitarian church. After poking around on Google, I'd say it's a view looking west toward the Hwy. 169 bridge over the Minnesota River as seen from the 5th floor of the Hilton Garden Inn. Wish I had more time and better skills to be more specific.

Another:

I love reading the entries you select for the VFYW contest but have never entered, but when I saw this I immediately thought of Mankato. In 2005, my friend and I paddled a canoe 2,000 or so miles from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Hudson Bay up in Canada, where the polar bears live. We were commemorating the 75th anniversary of a trip taken by Eric Sevareid and his friend Walter Port in 1930 (as written about in the book Canoeing with the Cree, by Sevareid.

The first 300 miles of the trip require paddling upstream on the Minnesota River, which begins on the South Dakota/Minnesota border and flows southeast until hitting a wall of rock in Mankato, at which point it turns to head northeast before joining the Mississippi in Minneapolis at historic Fort Snelling. In 1930, the Minnesota was so low (it was the beginning of the Dust Bowl) that Eric and Walt often had to pull their canoe over sandbars. For us, however, within the first few days the river rose and rose and soon flooded its banks. As large trees and other debris and the relentless gush of water made paddling upstream extremely difficult, we ended up skipping about 20 miles of river from St. Peter to Mankato.

Earlier this spring we finally made our way back to paddle that last stretch, which was delightful, especially since we went downstream. The first part of the river, though, flows through lots of concrete in Mankato, as you can see in this picture. You can also see that the river resides in a valley significantly bigger than the river itself; the valley was carved when glacial Lake Warren began draining towards the Mississippi. It's also interesting that the river valley is an oasis of trees in the otherwise flat, crop-filled land of southwestern Minnesota. And interesting that those trees by and large were not there, as I understand it, 200 years ago, when the valley was mostly filled with Dakota people, buffalo, prairie grasses and cranberries. (We used solar panels on our canoe to upload pictures and journals to our website as we paddled; our site is still up at hudsonbayexpedition.com.)

Anyway, it really does look like the Minnesota River flowing through Mankato; even the exposed sandbar looks familiar. But I don't know what building it's taken from. It looks to me like it's on the downtown side of things and the shot is taken from a west facing window. In fact, you can see the river bending from a southeasterly to a northeasterly flow in this picture.

OK, I had to do a little more research and Google maps leads me to believe this is the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Mankato; zooming in I can even see the sandbar in the river. The blue building behind the bridge is also visible in Google maps; looks like it's under construction. So I'm guessing the 6th floor. And it is west facing, but it's really more northwest facing, or west northwest. And let's say it's a room towards the northeast end of the building because the angles line up kinda sorta … let's say the third window from the northeast end of the building next to the Verizon Center.

I'm on the phone with my paddling friend Todd now and he is looking at all this with me and we are both getting very excited; he is also a regular Dish reader. If we are wrong we will be very surprised!

One more excellent entry:

Having lived my whole life in the Upper Midwest, this week's VFYW really leapt out at me – the river with its bluffs, the nondescript freeway junction, and the railroad felt familiar. My first instinct was La Crescent, Minnesota, where Interstate 90 has a similar jog and junction, but the main channel of the Mississippi (which runs along the Minnesota side) is much wider and the bridge is higher. There are a lot of medium-sized rivers in the region, but some observations on the geography helped nail it down:

– The bluff is awfully high and the valley awfully wide for a river that small; it was probably much bigger in the recent past.

– The flood wall and levee are built for a sizable flood of snowmelt every spring; the winters must be cold.

– At least three railroad tracks are visible and there are tank cars parked behind the trees; there is a rail yard there, but it can't be too big.

– The city is big enough to require a complex junction before the river bridge, but not big enough for the freeway to be very busy at midday.

My second guess turned out to be the correct one: Mankato, Minnesota. The view is of U.S. Highway 169 at its junction with Lookout Drive, as it turns south over the Minnesota River from North Mankato into Mankato proper. And there just happens to be a tall(ish) building in line with the view: the Hilton Garden Inn, circled below:

The hotel is eight stories tall and the photo was taken from a room high enough to see over the Hy-Vee grocery store across the street, but not so high as to see over the trees behind it. I would guess a fifth-floor room, but that's pure conjecture.

Growing up in the southern Twin Cities suburbs, I remember the Minnesota River being something you only noticed in the spring when the snow melted and the river flooded; in bad years half the crossings would be closed. The rest of the year it's a muddy stream unworthy of the huge valley it flows through. But in glacial times the river drained Lake Agassiz, bigger than all the Great Lakes combined, carving a deep valley through the Minnesota prairie. The river never flowed slowly enough to meander; the valley is almost perfectly straight from Big Stone Lake, on the South Dakota border, to the bend at Mankato and doesn't curve much downstream to Saint Paul.

Mankato's major place in history is as the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. history. In 1862, while George McClellan was blundering his way toward Richmond, years of shortchanging by the federal government and exploitation by Indian agents exploded into what I learned in school as the Sioux Uprising and my sisters learned as the Dakota War. A series of skirmishes in August and September ended with a Dakota surrender, and military courts sentenced 300 of the captured warriors to death for murder and rape. President Lincoln reviewed the court records and commuted the sentences of all but 39, which cost Minnesota Republicans several thousand votes in 1864. After one more Dakota was reprieved, the remaining 38 were hanged together on a specially built scaffold and buried in a mass grave. Congress dissolved the Sioux Reservation along the upper Minnesota River and most of the Dakota were expelled from Minnesota.

We have yet to hear back from the photo's submitter, so we don't know whether the 5th floor or 6th floor is the closest to the exact location, but we will update the results and contact the four Mankato guessers when we do. Update:

OK, 8th floor, north side, it's the hallway opposite the elevators, so no room number.  Or was it the ninth floor?  We were on the top-most floor … I called them – 9th floor!

So the paddler reader, who guessed the 6th floor, is the winner this week. The other three readers are going on our Correct Guessers list, which will give them a big advantage in future contests. Update from another reader, who more info about the view:

Your readers failed to mention that Mankato is the location of the confluence of the Minnesota and Blue Earth rivers (to form the Minnesota River that continues to the Mississippi). The word  Mankato is traditionally believed to be the local native American words for  "Blue Earth". According to Wikipedia, the "mighty" Blue Earth contributes 46% of the flow of the combined river leaving Mankato. Mankato was a regular stop on our annual trip back to visit relatives in various cities in southern Minnesota when I was growing up in Washington, DC. Family albums record spectacular floods in Mankato. Mankato for 47 years has been the summer camp for the MN Vikings football team. South of Mankato along I-90 is the county seat of Blue Earth, MN (Dad's hometown and Walter Mondale's county), which is where the two major branches of the Blue Earth river join on the their way to Mankato about 40 miles north.

(Archive)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

Rental bikes, coffee cups, poorly dressed tourists, and a picturesque bay … I’m guessing Monterey Bay, California.

Another:

Long time thrice-daily Dish reader here and haven’t seen a VFYW contest I’ve even dared to enter until this one (and probably should have resisted the urge this time).  But that pic just screams Eastern Seaboard to me and probably New England, complete with commercial fishing boats, clapboard buildings with window sashes, brick sidewalks and what must be American tourists in shorts and baseball caps.  If I could expand the pic on my phone I’m guessing those signs in the store windows would be shilling either t-shirts or saltwater taffy. And, well, since I’ve never been to Kennebunkport or Martha’s Vineyard I’m just going to go with the only coastal town I’ve ever visited on the east coast: Salem, Mass.

Another:

Marblehead, Massachusetts is the yachting capital of the world, which means in today’s terms that the harbour is filled with sailboats like in the picture. It also has the most pre-Revolution homes in any town in New England, which would explain the clapboard. It’s one of my favourite places in the world, and I do recall brick outside an old mansion, the Jeremiah Lee house, on Washington St. So I’m thinking the picture was taken from right inside the tourist entrance.

Another:

This view screams Maine.  But it could be from about any town in Maine’s midcoast.  My guess is Boothbay Harbor, somewhere on Union Street, looking out at the harbor.

Another:

I’m an appreciative fan of this feature, and I marvel at the somewhat chilling accuracy of successful searchers who use mapping sites and plot trajectory lines like drone-navigating cyberstalkers. By a more primitive method known as a “hunch”, or perchance a “lucky guess”, I’d say it’s a view of Gloucester harbor on Massachusetts’ North Shore.  My Dad is a native of Newburyport; it’s an area where many (O)Sullivans from the Muskerry region of West Cork settled. Without much recall of the town’s layout, I’ll guess its Rogers Street or Main Street.

Another:

Mackinac Island, Michigan? I can’t find the correct building or even street in Google Maps, but I’d swear I remember that frontyard and red brick walkway from my honeymoon 11 years ago. The Mid-West building style with a view into the small harbor on the south side of the island combined with tourists brings back strong memories – even if I don’t have the right location. What a wonderful contest!

Another:

It’s Makinac (pronounced Mackinaw) Island. The bicycles and pedestrians give this away, as the internal combustion engine is prohibited on the island. If you don’t get 200 correct guesses I’d be surprised.

Closer to 20, but Mackinac was the second-most popular guess by far. Another:

I usually just marvel at the entries to these contests because I don’t feel quite traveled-enough or Google-Earth-proficient to hazard a guess.  But I have an odd sensation that I’ve seen that distinctly-shaped courtyard before, when I was on Martha’s Vineyard a few years ago for a wedding.  I believe it’s in Edgartown, somewhere on North Water Street, though I can’t quite find anything through Google Maps that looks just like it. Ah, well.  I’ll see if that gets me anywhere in the vicinity, at least, and let the experts take us closer from there.

An expert writes:

This week’s view was intended to be like the center space in BINGO – a freebie for everyone, right?

This is a view from the public library in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I think it’s the window is noted in the photos attached:

It looks to be about the same height as the power lines on Commercial. Toss this one onto the heap of correct answers.  I don’t have a dazzling anecdote to share to help launch me over the finish line. How does one choose from all the magical moments that are spent on this spit of land at the end of the world?  Thank you for taking me back to so many happy summer days on this chilly and very autumnal evening.

Another:

That shot is from the restored tower (which was decapitated for a few sad years) of what has become the Provincetown Public Library, formerly the Heritage Museum, formerly a Methodist church.

Another:

I was just sitting there the other night eating a cupcake, so I recognized the view. The location of the pier and the bikeracks also line up with the satellite photo on Google Maps:

Another:

Fun fact: the library just went through a renovation, including the new brick-work present in the photograph.

Another:

Maybe you were the photographer, Andrew, during a tour related to the restoration project described here?

Nope, although I love the library and despise the monument. Another:

Surprisingly, Google maps clearly shows the brick walks and grass area with white wall/curbing while Bing maps shows the site under construction:

Perhaps one’s search preference will lead some searchers astray this week.

Another:

It was clever of you to leave the metal statue out on the right. That would have been a dead give away. We were there a few weeks ago and the kids had a blast checking out the massive boat inside the library.

The statue is an homage to tourists. And not too flattering (see below). Another:

Specifically, the photo is taken from the second floor window in the the large room with a half-scale replica of the Provincetown-built Grand Banks fishing schooner Rose Dorothea.  I’ve spent many hours studying in this exact spot:

I wrote my Atlantic cover piece on torture there.  Another:

More specifically, this was taken at approximately 10:27AM, standing 1.06 meters back from the window. The photographer is a 47-year-old straight male, 6’0, 181 lbs. He was wearing ecru linen shorts and a beige Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt (80% cotton, 20% polyester). You can totally tell from the way he’s holding the camera.

It was a Marc Jacobs t-shirt, I’m afraid. Another:

The library had a fantastic display on the second floor this summer, around the huge ship that’s built inside. The display highlighted gay people and their relationship with their faith – it almost made me cry.

Another:

Hello from NYC, a fellow gay conservative in search of a party, and a serious fan of Provincetown. Something I did not know until researching this contest was that each of the three main windows is named after a famous patron, the middle one (from which the photo was taken) being dedicated to Roberta Lasley. Intrigued, I did a bit of research to discover she was an amazingly successful business woman who had moved to Provincetown after retiring.

Once in Provincetown she developed the idea of a franchise of condom stores, culminating with two successful chains: Toys of Eros and Wild Hearts. What an amazing life, given that she went from being one of the first three women at Harvard Business School to a major force for social good, to a business person that addressed the critical need for promoting safe sex. What an amazing woman and thanks for turning me onto her biography through the contest. Even if I don’t win, it was worth it.

Another sends the above photo of the aforementioned statue. Another:

The two main clues that I used were the large breakwater, and the fact that the view appeared to be south facing, based on the shadows.  I googled “New England south facing harbor breakwater” and found a Corps of Engineer document of New England harbor breakwaters, with maps for each one.

Another view:

I can see my cottage from here. Another reader:

Instantly recognizable from the perch of the Provincetown Public Library is the breakwater that protects Provincetown harbor and the lobster fleet. Truro and Wellfleet stretch along the horizon. If the camera was nudged to the right, you might also be able to see the pier for the Boston fast ferries. And, if you look closely enough at the blue house across Commercial Street, you’ll see the very familiar lettering of Box Lunch – a Cape Cod staple!

Another:

You can see the womyn’s bookstore on the far left, the art gallery next to it, and then the t-shirt shop.  Nearby is Harbour Lounge (“Thirsty? We got liquor!”)  Further to the east is Dyer Street, where we spent a wonderful week (the one before Carnival) this August.  I’m attaching the view of the harbor from our bedroom window:

Another:

I haven’t been there for years but couldn’t forget that view.  The building in front of it, to the right there (without Google streetview mind you), is the nice little bookstore in town named after the old Bette Davis movie Now Voyager.  Thanks for the memory of that beautiful place I miss so much.

Actually, that book store just died. Another:

The photo looks like it must have been taken recently, during my favorite time in P’town. After Labor Day, the crowds have died down, and the temperature is dropping, and everything just has a much less frenzied air about it… Lovely. Unfortunately, I have no amusing anecdotes to share about the library – I’ve never even been inside, although my brother-in-law was inside just last month in search of free Wi-Fi. Does that count?

Another:

Do you need a cute story? I took my mom there for 4th of July family vacation one summer. We stayed as always at the Cape Codder. The guy who owns the guest house started the Dolphin Fleet whale-watching tour. My mom was open mouthed when she saw all the drag queens on fire engines during the parade out front. I had my 10 month old with me that year. I was pregnant the year before on vacation when we went whale watching and my older daughter who was 7 was so fascinated by the whales and dolphins she decided the new baby, if a girl, would be named Delphina after the Greek meaning for dolphins. The docs said I was having a boy so I never gave it another thought. Delphina is now 23.

Another:

I not only know where this is, but last year – in this town – I was one of the producers of an indie romantic comedy film “BearCity 2”, that has as one of its stars, Andrew’s husband Aaron! The picture was taken out the front 2nd floor window of the just-renovated Provincetown MA library, formerly the Central Methodist Church, built in 1860 and on the National Register of Historic Places. We look over Ptown Harbor and see MacMillan Wharf to the right. Two of Ptown’s many fine art galleries are across the street. Just as pictured, the green lawn in front has, somehow, the most perfect flawless sod one could ever imagine, despite the salt air. Last week the lawn was decorated with thousands of colorful prayer ribbons. In fact, Andrew and Aaron when in Ptown get their coffee a couple dozen yards away from this very spot!

Another sends the above photo. Another reader:

I saw you and briefly introduced myself to you at frappo66 on Saturday afternoon (after walking back from a wonderful day at Herring Cove beach!)

Another:

I made my first Dishhead sight-seeing trip to P-town this summer on the day of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. I believe you were preparing to live-blog the  event as we were eating our ice cream in the street on the east end. I think I might have seen your husband riding his bike, but no Andrew sighting. (My first actual Dishhead sight-seeing trip was last summer to Portland, Maine. I wanted to see the shop where my t-shirt came from, but it was closed! Did you know there was such a thing as a Dishhead sight-seeing trip? Perhaps it’s just me.) I imagine you’ll get a lot of correct answers, but I mostly wanted to point out that because of the Dish, I explored a new part of the world this summer and really enjoyed it. Next time, though, we are definitely going back at night! I have a feeling we barely got to know P-town with an afternoon visit.

There are many Ptowns. I’ve spent 14 consecutive summers here and I’m still uncovering them. Another:

A few years back we were visiting P-Town and a my sister and I were sitting right on those library steps when a guy next to us started choking on a piece of food! My sister, being the calm one, put her hand over her mouth and started screaming which I am sure made the poor guy much calmer. Eventually the guy coughed it out but it is one of those vacation memories that we still share a laugh about.

Another:

No special story for me, except the memory of a bad sunburn and a lousy boyfriend one 4th-of-July weekend after a long drive from UMass. I think I slept on his friend’s porch all night because it was so hot. I loved being so close to the ocean. Hope to return someday with my native Californian husband who, despite a great education, still thinks Massachusetts borders New Jersey.

Another:

Your picture looked awful familiar to me, because I am staying in the apartments behind the blue building as I write this. Your photographer took this picture from the second story of the Provincetown library, located at 356 Commercial. The blue building is 355 Commercial Street and houses Birdie Silkscreen Studio and Scott’s Cakes (legalize gay cupcakes!). This is an amazing coincidence. Even if I don’t win it has added an indelible highlight to my vacation.

Another:

I assume this is an homage to the end of summer in Provincetown.  This is from the public library that my son now refuses to go to since the day we went over spring break and a few teens from the neighborhood (sullen youth) made some kind of snide remark to him.  Our usual trip involves a walk up to the top of the Pilgrim Monument, a stroll on Commercial Street – where my wife always stops by the Wired Puppy for a potential Andrew sighting – and then on to Spiritus for pizza and sometimes boccie.  My daughter likes to visit all the libraries on the Cape, so we have spent much time in the Provincetown Library.

Another:

One evening along Commercial Street walking with my travel companion we passed a plaza with some park benches facing the street. At one was an elderly couple watching the people on the street. In the middle of it was a young family, mother, father, baby and child. At the other end was a couple of flirtatious bears being into each other but not overly PDA, just doing their thing. Nobody was upset or appeared to care. They were all so different but all together there, enjoying the public space and the evening. Acceptance, tolerance, fully integrated into the life of the community. Not a separate place like the Castro, but a place where everyone lives with each other. For a moment it seemed like I was in Western Europe, not the US in the 1990s. It left the best impression and a beautiful memory of Provincetown, it being one of those special places in the country where tolerance lives and breathes on a casual summer evening. Where the spirit and beauty of equality that our Declaration of Independence talks about is alive, right now.

My niece and nephew have only seen Ptown and Boston in America. I love that. Another:

I started going to P-town in 1960 with my family when I was five years old.  Exploring the sand flats at low tide is the happiest memory of my childhood, and bringing my own children there my happiest as a grown-up.  Your love of this place is one of the things that keep me coming back to the Dish.

Another:

Thank you for putting up an easy one for the masses! First time I’ve been even close to even knowing where to start looking and I got it! I bet this hooks me even more.

We received about 350 entries, and close to 300 correctly answered Ptown. Another:

Seriously, how are you going to select a winner?  Would they have to specify the date and time the photo was taken?  What floorboard the photographer was standing on? The type of camera?  If I send a 10,000-word essay on the Ptown public library, will that suffice?

Since isolating a clear winner is close to impossible, we are going to see if the library administrators will accept a copy of the View From Your Window book so that anyone can go see it. A parting view of the library from chez nous:

(Archive)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

It looks like a downtown view of Panama City, with maybe the Iglesia del Carmen on the right hand side in the background. The rooftops in the foreground, and the bland 1970s apartment block on the right, seem unmistakably Panamanian.

Another:

Metro Manila, Philippines, just outside of Makati. The giveaway is actually the very distinctive Iglesia ni Cristo church (the pointy building just to the right of the blue metal roof). Those churches are all over the Philippines, but especially in Metro Manila.

Another:

I realize this could be about anywhere, but the buildings, the red roofs, and the upward pointing satellite dishes remind me of parts of Bangkok I see when I ride the Skytrain.

Another:

It’s been a while since I responded to one of these, because there’s so many people doing the VFYW puzzle that there’s always someone who pops up and says either “OMG! I’m in this very building right now!” or “OMG! I grew up half a block from there!”. That’s not your fault, that’s just the success of the blog. That’ll happen with this one, too, but all I have to go on is a city with a mix of old and new, red roofs, and my favorite, satellite antennas. I can’t resist satellite antennas. They are the clue of clues. We’re very nearly equatorial. We’re probably in Vietnam. We’re probably in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly named Saigon. Sure, we could be somewhere else. But not all that far away, right?

Right, but not quite the right country. Another reader works his way to the correct answer:

First time I’ve played this game, but I love it. My initial glance at the picture said several things:

Asia – wasn’t 100% sure, but the roofs just looked Asian – something you’d see in Shanghai. Red roofs in Europe, Americas would most likely be tile. Warm, probably tropical, climate. Slopes of roofs suggest it never snows but rains a lot (note repairs on roof in foreground). Also buildings look generally open. Not wealthy – satellite dishes are old school, and it just looks ramshackle. This ruled out Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore for me. Developing, but not developed. Cranes in background suggest active construction. Doesn’t look overbuilt either, but hard to tell.

Of course the most obvious feature is the church spire on the right – so it’s likely an old city that had a strong colonial history. I should note I’ve never been to any of the likely places (I’ve been to Japan and Beijing, but that’s it for Asia). I considered some of the major colonial cities of southeast Asia – Shanghai, Jakarta, Hanoi – but none of the churches seemed right. So I considered various places in India. Reconsidered my Asia hunch (Carribean/Africa – nothing made sense). Then, as I stared at the image some more, the church just kept on saying “British colonial”, and when I put together “British colonial”, southeast Asia, and not wealthy, Rangoon, Burma popped into my head. So I started looking at images of Rangoon and became convinced that I was right.

Rangoon is also known as Yangon and Burma is often called Myanmar. Four readers correctly answered the city. The second:

The photo appears to be taken from the Alfa Hotel on Nawaday Road in Yangon, Myanmar.  The view is looking South from the back of the hotel.  My first impression was that this was somewhere in Southeast Asia and in one of the poorer developing countries so that meant Laos, Cambodia or Myanmar.  I did some searches for churches with steeples in these countries and was able to match the steeple in the photo to a photo of the Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Yangon.  Using Google Maps Satellite images I found the red roofed buildings in the foreground with the rooftop water tanks and noted the Alfa hotel in a location that would match for the photo.  I travel in Southeast Asia frequently and have been meaning to visit Myanmar given the recent advances toward democratization.  I am in awe of Aung Sang Suu Kyi and would love to visit her country.

Another:

This week’s view is a topical one, given the rapid changes in the Burmese political system. It shows the city of Yangon, formerly referred to as Rangoon. The picture was taken from roughly the tenth story of the Alfa Hotel at 41 Nawaday Street, Dagon Township looking south, south east towards te riverfront. Two local landmarks anchor each side of the picture. On the right is the steeple of the Holy Trinity Anglican Church, one of the oldest colonial structures in the city, dating to 1886. On the left is the decidedly more modern blue-glass Centrepoint Tower, which opened in 2010.

Attached are a pair of street views of the Alfa Hotel, a labeled overhead map and web links to shots of both the Centrepoint Tower and the Holy Trinity Church. One of the shots of the hotel is labeled with what I presume would be the floor and location of the viewer’s window on the opposite of the building, as I was unable to find a shot of the Alfa’s southern facade.

Another visual guess:

We have yet to hear back from the photo submitter as to the exact location of the window, but we will update the results as soon as we do. Update:

How exciting! Sorry for the delay.  Well, not only did several of your readers guess it right, but they also did so with pinpoint accuracy!  The picture was indeed taken from the Alfa Hotel in Yangon.  And it was taken from the 11th floor.  So I guess the third reader who guessed the city right is the most precise (and almost creepily so…). Great job on your readers part picking out the Anglican Church (and knowing what it was); it wasn’t the highest quality pic.

Anyway, thanks for sharing. Made my day!

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You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

I was thinking Midwest because the cement building looks like some kind of grain elevator.  My daughter thinks the foreground looks like a recent Taylor Swift video that supposedly was filmed in Memphis.  So we'll go with Memphis.

Another writes:

Brugge, Belgium?  Wild guess.  Just am impulse really.  The houses, chimney, weather, small port, lace curtains.  Have never been there, just in the area.

Another:

If it weren't for the big building in the distance I'd say it was Tunbridge Wells, England, from one of the Hotel du Vin's rear-looking rooms – but likely a world away.

Another:

Grimsby, England. Taken in 1965.

Another:

I thought Ireland first, but the presence of the Offshore Supply Vessel in the center of the shot suggested somewhere bordering on the North Sea.  It looks rather flat in the background, so that sort of rules out Aberdeen and the other Scottish North Sea bases for offshore supply, so I'm going with somewhere on the River Tees. 15 minutes of searching – bollocks, no way, but fascinating anyway – plenty of evidence of an industrial landscape past – ghost slipways for a shipyard, the outline of a roundhouse for locomotives in a railyard.

Another:

Tough one this week.

Thought about Switzerland, until I saw the large ship on the left. And, since it looks a little too hilly to be the Netherlands, I'm going to go with Hamburg, Germany. Probably wrong, but oh well.

Another:

This had to be in the British Isles, from the rows of terraced houses and the greyness of the sky! I could just about make out some lettering on the large silo, and (after a detour through the R & B Hall of Fame!), I found out that R & H Hall is a supplier of animal feeds in Ireland. They have only a few locations so the Cork one was not hard to find. The view is from the marked window of a house on Wellington Road. I figure it has to be the upper window because of the crossbars, the white stucco visible to the right outside the window, and the fact that the top of the window seems to be visible. The 2nd and 3rd-floor windows are quite tall and it seems unlikely the submitter was standing on a ladder! I can't find a street number but the other photo with the red door appears to be the street entrance:

Cork, Ireland it is. Another:

It's Ireland! Finally, you feature Ireland! I knew it from the minute I saw it, the damp concrete path to the street, the weird ugly yellow bush in next door's garden (why do we grow it everywhere I don't know; it's hideous), the chimneys, the grey roofs, grey sky, grey everything.

Another:

One look at the lace curtain and mock-Georgian PVC window frame and I knew this was modern Ireland.  I believe the picture was taken from Summerhill Terrace, overlooking the river Lee and the city's docks. Cork has its charms, unfortunately, none of them are obvious from the photo. It looks grim!

An aerial view:

Another reader:

This one was easy for any Cork natives. The R&H Hall building is right on Kennedy Quay on the south side of the River Lee in the Port of Cork, just before the river splits to create the island that is downtown Cork. The picture is taken from one of the terraces above the Lower Glanmire Road on the north side of the river. A little snooping around google maps suggests it may be number 6 Summerhill North because of the windows, the garden, and the back of the white house in the row in front with black railing.This is my first entry and I can't get into drawing maps*.

As a Cork man who has been in the US for eight years, this has brightened my day no end. Cork people are very proud of their hometown – some of the most accurate maps of Ireland depict the country as Cork and not-Cork.

I'll be heading home for a visit in October for my brother's wedding. My siblings have been trying to bankrupt me with their annual sequence of weddings. But we wouldn't miss it for the world. And I have a two-and-a-half month old daughter* who has yet to meet her clan, with her grandmother especially counting down the days til she gets her mitts on her. It's going to be absolutely brilliant. Thanks for the view.

Another:

I'd have been ashamed of myself if I didn't get this view of the my favourite city in Ireland (I'm a Limerick man myself but while in college, I spent 6 months working in Cork and the building I worked in is actually in that photo (if you look on the middle ground on the right hand side, you'll see a row of grey buildings behind the lamppost which is close to where the photographer was and behind those buildings is a lighter grey building which is Navigation House, former home of the Planning Dept. of Cork City Council where I worked in 2004 and loved every day of it).

Details from the submitter:

The photo was taken from a building located between Wellington Road and Summerhill North on Cork's northside – the address is Summerhill Terrace, Wellington Road, a couple of doors down from the Ardara Bed & Breakfast. The view is from a south-facing window looking across Summerhill North and the River Lee (hidden) to Cork's south docks, where you can see the large R&H Hall building slightly to the left. Here's the exact location on Google Maps. You can see pretty much the same view by going to the Street View at the placemark I've left on Summerhill North for you.

He follows up in response to a reader's image that had a red circle in the top right corner of the building in question:

The photo was taken from the ground floor window on the left of the building as you face it – basically, move your red circle to the window to the left, and then down three times and you've got it!

Two readers guessed that exact window. The first sends an image:

And the second:

OK, third time lucky I hope. I got the right answers for the Edinburgh and Cornwall VFYW contests, give or a take a window in either direction, but now we're in my homeland, so that has to be a triumphant omen. This is definitely Cork, Ireland, and I'm fairly sure the photograph is taken from Summerhill Terrace, a group of apartments on Summerhill North Road (although technically I think the postal address might be Wellington Road, on the other side). I've highlighted the window I think the picture is taken from in the attached photo. Don't hold it against me that I'm a Dub!

Too close for a tie-breaker, as both readers correctly guessed windows in the past without winning, so we'll just have to award two books this week. By the way, the other readers who guessed adjacent windows have been put on the "Correct Guessers" list, which will give them an edge in future close contests.

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You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

First-timer here. The buses, parking, lot lights, and the green fields scream Japan to me (28 year resident). The hotel in the distance (probably a love hotel), greenery to the left, balcony above and light fixture in the reflection combine to make me guess somewhere just outside Narita airport. Not close enough to win, but worth a try.

Another writes:

Something about the mixture of sleek newer highway busses and worn out old school busses reminds me of the bus station at Chetumal, Mexico. The nice busses get you to the Belize border. The decrepit ones take you into Belize. Just a hunch … although I don’t remember the large trees.

Another:

I’m guessing that’s a football stadium in the distance, but googling “central american football stadiums” hasn’t given me a match, and I don’t really have time to look at other regions.  I’m just going to guess Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Another:

It’s missing a large lake in the center of town, and I can’t figure out where this photo would have been taken from, but to me this looks like the small eco-tourist community of Las Terrazas in the Piñar del Rio province of Cuba. I visited a few years ago when I was studying in Havana and the foliage and the color of the buildings in the distance ring true to me.

Then again, my girlfriend says Ecuador, so there’s that.

Another gets much closer:

I was in Nepal two years ago hiking in the Annapurna range and I remember how the buses seemed to be independent from one another – similar to taxis – with all different shapes and colors, which this picture reminded me of.  The drivers would go on a route, and would just wait at major stops, packing as many customers in as possible (even on the roofs!!) until another bus came along and honked at them to get moving. So I think this one is Nepali but I don’t have the time to research much this week (and I’m not sure I’d get anywhere with this one!!) so I’m going to guess Pokhara.

Another nails the right country:

I saw the picture and it screamed India.

The mix of old and new buses made me guess that way. The yellow and blue bus in the lower center and red and cream bus in the lower left were major hints. As I am unable to narrow down after that, I am taking a guess that it is the Southern Hill station of Munnar. (I haven’t seen bus like these in Northern India, hence the guess towards Southern India.)

Another:

The buses are what prompted me to write in (for the very first time!), since I’m convinced this has to be India. The vegetation checks out too (is that a banana or plantain tree in the bottom right?). So assuming this is India, it’s a reasonable guess that the stadium in the distance is a cricket stadium. Googling for images of cricket stadia around the country brought me to the Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium in Pune, Maharashtra, India. The Google satellite image seems to corroborate the guess – the stadium is indeed ringed by hills and fields, and what appears to be a large parking lot. Unfortunately, that’s the limit of my sleuthing skills, so I’ll leave it to your other readers to pin-down the location to the nearest window, as I’m sure someone will.

The winner was the only reader to get the right city – and in great detail:

My first entry … always wanted to take part, never found anything that I found even familiar till now.  The minute I saw the photo it seemed familiar, spent some time searching on the Internet and now am quite sure it is the Margao Bus Terminal, in Margao, Goa, India. It is also known as the Kadamba Bus Terminal. The picture is taken from the Sapphire Comfort Hotel, opposite the bus stand across the main road (Margao Panaji Highway). Not sure about the exact floor / room from which the picture was taken, for my best guess, see attached photo with my markup:

I started with the assumption that it was most likely the Margao Bus stand. First I confirmed the color combination of the state transport buses (the one standing in front of the building with red tiled roof in the middle) so I was quite sure my guess was in the right direction. Then compared the building with red tiles and the shed opposite it with satellite photos. The stadium in the background with floodlights also helped confirm the location. Lastly, in the top left of the photo, the building extends out and its distinctive pattern confirmed the hotel and the likely location from which the photo was taken.

I have been to Goa many times, mostly on backpacking trips, and I was last there about two years ago. Great blog, keep up the good work. I have been addicted to your blog for many years.

Details from the submitter:

The photograph was taken from my room on the fourth floor (fifth floor, American style) of the Sapphire Comfort Hotel in the town of Margao in the Indian state of Goa. I teach at a university in Japan, and I am spending the month of August in Margao at the invitation of a college here. This is my first visit to India and I came straight to Margao, so the view from my hotel was one of my first impressions of this country.

You have previously posted window photos taken from my house in Yokohama (a photo that also appeared in your book), my office in Tokyo, and, my personal favorite, a hotel room in Osaka. I had hoped that the Osaka photo would be chosen for the contest, because the abandoned, unfinished building outside the window is so haunting (though, I should add, atypical of that section of Osaka). But I suppose this Goa photo was a better contest choice. While I would not be able to identify the location if I had not taken the photo myself, I hope that it contains enough clues for some of your intrepid readers to solve it.

I have attached a photograph of the hotel taken from across the street, as well as a satellite photograph showing the location of the hotel:

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