Dante's Hell doesn't seem to be in Google Maps yet, but based on his description in Canto VI of The Inferno, this must be somewhere in the Third Circle: "In the third circle I arrive, of show'rs / Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang'd / For ever, both in kind and in degree" (H. F. Cary translation).
Seriously, I'm sure that wherever this is some of the inhabitants must be wonderful people, but human beings were never meant to live in places as bleak as this one.
Another writes:
No American cars, so this is definitely not any part of North America. The weather indicates that this is the northern hemisphere. The building have a Soviet-style dreariness to them. The landscape is extremely flat, and I get the feeling that this is near the sea. So I'm guessing Vladivostok, Russia.
Another:
For no particular reason, I think it could possibly be Ulan Bator, in Mongolia. I have this book of photos from a tour a group of professional skateboarders and photographers took to Ulan Bator when they were traveling the Trans-Siberian railway, and the photo resembles every landscape shot in the book; dreary, vapid and ultimately, brown-colored. Just looks and feels desolate, although they say the kids really sprang to life in the presence of a skateboard. Pretty cool.
Another:
Vaguely Burmese pagoda-like inspiration for the tall building in the center, kind of Stalinesque feel to the rest of it, including a wide avenue and little traffic, buses. Low clouds and maybe a hint of mountains in the background. Naypyidaw, Myanmar is my story and I'm sticking to it.
Another:
I love shots of urban bleakness and this one is hard to beat in that category.
I was watching "Radioactive Wolves" last night on Nature and this architecture seems comparable to that seen around Chernobyl. Going to make a wild guess at Simferopol in Crimea simply because I like that name.
Another:
Boston? Just kidding. However it looks like what urban planners of the '40s and '50s envisioned for Boston, and did partially execute:
Another:
I'm going with Turkey for a couple of reasons. 1) I think I can make out the distant outline of a multi-minaret mosque on the skyline. Multiple minarets tends to be a Turkish thing. 2) One of the buses appears to have a logo which might be that of the Turkish tour company Kamil Koc (I'm not actually very confident about this last point, but I'm not going to pass up a chance to say Kamil Koc). Once I settled on Turkey, the picture looks dusty and poor-ish, which probably means Anatolia. Nevsehir is a town small enough to be dusty, big enough to have apartment buildings, and close enough to a tourist destination (Cappadocia) to have buses. Kamil Koc buses.
Heh. Another:
This scene is typically Egyptian based on the semi-unfinished buildings, the desert environment, the tour buses, and the wide highways. However, because it is not dense in the picture it can't be Alexandria or Cairo, that's why I'm guessing an area on the desert road from Cairo to Alexandria, on the outskirts of Alexandria, Egypt's second city – the city where my parents are from, and the one-time "Pearl of the Mediterranean." Those days are long gone.
Another:
It looks like Heliopolis, the northeastern suburb of Cairo, on the way out to the airport. The construction technique of the buildings in the upper left of the photo – a concrete frame filled in with bricks – is characteristically Egyptian (although what looks like rain in the distance is not).
Another:
Somewhere in the Middle East, not too wealthy, a bunch of Westerners driving around in not especially nice cars, and looks like that might be a hurricane in the distance. Looking for recent hurricanes around there, I find one that hit Masqat and Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is where they pave the streets with gold and make buildings out of diamonds, so I don't think it's there, so Masqat, Oman it is.
Another:
I think this photo shows Zubayri Street in Sana'a Yemen, from SW of the Officers' Club that is south of the old cemetery at the corner of Zubayri St and Abdul Mughny Street. The cemetery is southeast of Bab al-Yemen and the Old City. You can see where the intercity buses board – the ones that go to eastward destinations like Mareb and Hadhramawt. (There are other boarding points for other intercity buses.) I have no romantic stories of hotel rooms overlooking the bus depot, but I have traveled eastward from there many times. Such a wonderful country, Yemen, and I hope only the best for its people through their current transition.
Another gets close:
A complete wild-ass guess, but the flat-roof air-raid architecture, buses, and soccer on cement reek of dictatorship point to Sirt, Libya. Given your predilection for linking the VFYW to momentous events, this must be where Gaddafi/Qaddafi/Bob Dylan-on-cocaine was killed. I'd write more but I have a nasty cold and the ephedrine has already said enough.
Libya it is. Another:
Tripoli? Guessing this building circled here in the attached image, on Shari An Nasr near the Dahra bus station:
I don't have any stories about Libya to make my case, but it looks like the classic dust storm, a "haboob" blowing up, and I know that the assault on Sirte was delayed a bit for a recent sandstorm, so I'm hoping this is close to being right. None of the major hotels in Tripoli looked quite right with their surroundings, so this is what I've come up with. I bet you'll get a lot of interesting guesses with this one, here's hoping this is the closest! At least I've been able to use the word haboob today, which both gives me the Beavis and Butthead jollies and pisses off the folks who worry that Sharia law is somehow supplanting the American judicial system, making it a double win in my book. Haboob!
But only one nailed the correct city:
This might be the week for a view from Libya. I'm guessing it's by one of the bus terminals on Algeria St. in Benghazi just north of the city center.
A hearty congrats on one of our toughest ones yet. From the photo's owner:
It's from the second floor window of the Al-Nooran Hotel in Benghazi, Libya. The hotel is marked on Google Earth. There are a few hints – the architecture and palm trees are typical Middle Eastern/North African, green facade on on some of the buildings and the slightly rusty hue of iron oxide in the concrete, and the broad but uncrowded streets all hint at Libya. The odd structure next to the hotel is quite visible on Google Maps for someone who wants to spend hours searching every North African city intersection. Anyway, not an easy one.
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.
Surprisingly-thin results in this week's contest, given that only a few dozen readers submitted entries (compared to a weekly average of 200-300). We can never really tell which windows will be the most difficult and which will be the easiest. A reader writes:
I am a bit concerned that the sun is in the wrong place. But I think this is looking east towards the Columbo harbour district of Columbo, Sri Langka. Looks tropical. Has the right sort of tile down on one of the buildings. There are a pair of the tall buildings in the center of the photo which shows only one building with the slightly smaller square top.
Another writes:
The reddish-brown smog obscuring the sun helps, but I'm almost certain that the building with the scaffolding/facade is a key part of the downtown skyline. It's the actual Cairo side of the city, not Giza, as well. Technically, it might be the "Balad al Wasit" neighborhood – basically 'Downtown.'
Another:
This is probably just because I'm in the middle of "REAMDE" by Neal Stephenson, but this looks like how I'm picturing Xiamen while reading. (Given my total lack of skill at VFYW, this means it's probably in Peru.)
Another:
Hanoi, Vietnam? Of course somebody else will tell you the exact window of the correct building, but my wife and I get really excited when we're even in the right hemisphere!
Right continent even. Another:
I am fairly certain this is a photo of Bangkok, where I live. The pointy pyramid poking out from the buildings on the left, plus some of the middle distance structures look very familiar, though because of BKK's layout and numerous nearly identical buildings, I cannot tell exactly from where this was taken, though my guess is from Sukhumvit facing towards Silom.
Another:
You have to stop this contest.
My husband for the bulk of my time as a faithful reader listened to the interesting bits and looked at the pictures and liked the fact that I like your blog. But he's discovered the VFYW contest. He darned near won it last week. And he's obsessed.
You want to know how I spend Saturday through Tuesday now? It involves him taking over my computer, clicking obsessively, and finally looking at me with glassy eyes muttering things about "the plant growth on the walls indicates humidity so it can't be the Middle East. I'm thinking Malaysia. Or a flood zone in an abandoned area of Wisconsin."…."I think that object we can't focus on with little the Windows Picture and Facts Viewer because they so cleverly obscured it is a royal seal that you see commonly displayed in (fill in the blank)…."That looks like a crest and the other things looks like a mosque under construction. It might also be a satellite dish". And then it goes downhill from there.
I beg you, either just end the contest or just write him a note that he won (I'll pay for the book!) and make it stop.
I think this is taken in Karnataka, India. That seems to be the old Krone Communications building right of center, which has merged with ADC to form ADC Krone Communications. There is also an Indian-style structure in the background to the right. The palm trees suggest a warm, arid climate, and that must be ivy on the terraces to the right.
Another almost gets it:
Couldn't find this place. Might be Hong Kong, might be Jakarta. Pretty sure it's in Southeast Asia somewhere. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia?
Another:
Jakarta, Indonesia? That's my guess and I'm sticking to it.
Great guess! Three other readers correctly answered the Indonesian capital:
View of MNC Tower, Jakarta next to Djakarta Theater taken from Saripan Pacific Hotel 9th floor (at sunrise :)
This was fun. Spent an hour investigating types of hanging moss that might appear on balconies. Survey says: X. Then mixed and matched roofing styles and colors from Asia and got what seemed like a match. Found the MNC building on the outskirts of the city (and what might be an Alfamidi Market – the building with the red decor in the photo) and then matched it up with views from Djarkata Theater.
Another:
This week's fortuitous clue turned out to be the red roofs. The meaningless clue, that I searched for in vain, is that strange beige concrete pole sticking up with what look like two scoops on the end. I thought for sure that would be common in the place the photo was taken from, but I can't find anything else like it, even in the area.
The photo was taken from the Sari Pan Pacific Hotel in Jakarta, looking due East, at sunrise. A search for red roofs fortuitously matched a roof in Bali, and that led to Jakarta, but the search in a place as gigantic as Jakarta isn't for red roofs – it's for a skyscraper that matches one of those in the photo. For that, Google Earth with the geotag-linked photos is indispensable. There's a panoramio photo, possibly also taken from the same hotel, here. The tall skyscraper off in the distance is the Bamantara tower, home to MNC TV (whose logo is not quite visible at the top).
The only street view I can find is taken from the street that isn't quite visible in the photo, and the reverse is also true: the window isn't quite visible from the street:
What we can say is that the window is at the same level as the fourth row of planters from the top of the parking structure next door. As the street view picture shows, the window is one floor below the lowest visible rows of windows. Checking the hotel web page, they have 18 floors, but the top floor is a small number of suites, probably the rooftop penthouse we can see from the street. The other rooms occupy floors 5 through 17, and without a 13th floor, we can count down from the top to the floor where the photo was taken from – the tenth.
So, that's my guess: 10th floor, Sari Pan Pacific Hotel, Jakarta, Indonesia, looking due East at sunrise.
That reader actually won the contest last week, so he's ineligible for the prize despite the excellent entry. But the following reader nailed the correct floor regardless:
It's always a joy when you're right at first guess, and, after having settled for Jakarta, Indonesia, it was surprising how quickly I bumped into the roof of the bright red building. From there it was easy to establish that the photo was taken from the Sari Pan Pacific Hotel at Jalan M H Thamrin 6. Do I really have to guess the floor? Well, let's say the 8th.
From the submitter of the photo:
Jakarta, 8th floor window, room 805, in the back of the Sari Pan Pacific Hotel (one of the big international ones, across from the UN offices), sunrise, 26 September.
Update from a reader:
I like to consider myself a pretty big fan of your blog and of the VFYW contest; I've submitted five or so entries and have had three of them posted by you. (Only came close once, in Malacca.) It really is a small joy to have this mystery photo running through my head every weekend and to see the answer every Tuesday; it's become a rather happy personal tradition to me.
So why did it have to be THE ONE WEEK that I didn't follow up on the contest that the Dish chooses Jakarta?!? Not only have I been there 10 times and know the place fairly well, but my wife is from there! Sigh … I know I could have got it …
Moral of the story: Never keep your eyes off of the Dish for too long, as you may regret it big time!
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.
I'm useless at this sort of thing, so I usually just sit it out and wonder how other folks can be so smart. This one is almost impossible – no cars, no landmarks to speak of and no background mountains. So, for the sake of tropicality and as a tribute to the washing on the lines, let's say Libya. Tripoli?
Another writes:
This screams urban Africa to me. The palm trees suggest tropical and likely near a coastline. Would say Eastern coast, as there are more big/crowded cities there. Maputo or Dar maybe, but my first glance said Maputo.
Another:
I love the hut, the clothes on the line, and landscaping on the roof of the building in the foreground that was obviously intended to be at least one story higher than it now is. The rooftop cisterns are primitive, but effective. It could be Central or South America but more likely Africa. The first thing that came into my head after a 30-second look, for no discernible reason, was Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. I have been in the construction business for more than 30 years but am still amazed at what can be accomplished with limited means as long as will, ingenuity, and manpower are available. The ingenious method of pouring concrete in a multi-story building shown in the following video reminded me of the buildings in the contest photo:
One more thing. I realize this hasn't exactly been a slow news week, but I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a resolution of the controversy over the result of last week's contest, #70. I know it was addressed, but it was not resolved, nor was their an indication that it would be. Has the submitter of the photo been contacted for verification? This part of their note caught my eye: "A friend used to live in this apartment, … so when visiting home (I'm an expat Scot living in Belgium) we used to abuse his hospitality quite a bit. He's since moved out and is on a 7-month meander through Latin America…" The submitter refers to #11 as an apartment, but it has been a bed and breakfast since at least 2005.
The submitter of last week's photo responds to the row:
I think your protesting correspondents may well be right. They seem to have paid more attention than I did when physically there! I have no immediate way to confirm with my friend, who has probably reached Guatemala by now, but the reader you quoted seems very persuasive. Deep apologies for the confusion!
An honest mistake. Back to this contest:
Well, not quite so easy this week as the past weeks. The palms and general decaying post-colonial appearance puts us somewhere in the tropics. The size of the buildings indicate it's a city of some size, too. I considered South America for a bit, but it somehow had an African vibe, and the "scaffolding" on the right nicely matches some Google Image hits I came across labelled "Tanzanian scaffolding" (see here). We've recently had contests for Mozambique, Angola and South Africa, so I ruled those out. I couldn't find any cities in West Africa that had the requisite size or vague general appearance, so those got ruled out too. Go north from Tanzania and it starts getting "redder" and dustier too. And, to top it off, the buildings in the photo bear the most resemblance out of anything I've seen to one shot I found on Google Images of buildings under construction in the Kariakou neighborhood of Dar es Salaam, which of course I can't find again but was something like this.
So, much more of a guess than the last two weeks, and the lack of Street View has really hindered my progress. But, not a bad stab I think! Fingers crossed.
Another:
I suck at Google Maps, but the building on the right without the walls looks hauntingly familiar to the view from my room in the Hotel Victoria Regia on Ricardo Palma in Iquitos, Peru last summer. (I was there for an ayahuasca retreat, but that's another story). The angle seems off from my memory, and since there aren't that many hotels in the Amazon I will guess the 5th floor of the Hotel Sandalo, 616 Prospero, Iquitos, Peru.
Another reader shared his ayahuasca story here. Another writes:
It reminds me of Nicaragua's capital, Managua. While walking its streets on a backpacking trip through Central America in the early '90s, I was amazed that people inhabited multi-story unfinished buildings that developers abandoned following the 1972 earthquake. I wouldn't be surprised if those very buildings are being used the same way two decades later.
Another:
This is a view of Cairo, Egypt. Homeowners there often don't complete the construction of upper floors of buildings, as doing so prevents the reclassification of the project from "work in process" to "completed project." Since the building is not yet completed, it is not reassessed at the new higher value for property tax purposes. The city is full of otherwise completed and occupied buildings – except for the upper floors. You can see that the building in the foreground is occupied but still has concrete rebar extending up from the roof of the building. In fact, it appears that some of the support columns are being used as planters!
Another:
I'm crap at this game; the only one I ever guessed correctly was the Boston green line, which about 500 others got right as well. Sometimes I just get a gut feeling, though, and those guesses are sometimes in the correct hemisphere. This photo reminds me of the year I spent in Beirut ten years ago. The frenetic, ramshackle building, the ubiquitous rooftop gardens (especially the plants growing out of giant olive oil tins) and the palm trees. I'm hoping I don't get so far off that you show this as the first, booby guess, but hey, sometimes you just go with your gut.
Another:
I'm guessing it's from The Future.
Another:
Famgusta, Cyprus? It's a seafront city that was abandoned in a matter of hours during the 1974 war, and since then an uninhabited space within the UN buffer zone of Cyprus has gone to ruins. The distant flag appears to be of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. A confounding element is apparently fresh laundry on the roof top. Squatters? If I'm right, this scene is the site of heart-breaking stories. Hopefully Famgusta will be rebuilt as part of an bizonal, bicommunal federation reuniting Cyprus.
Another:
Some poor outlying district in Bangkok, Thailand. The clues are the building style and condition, vegetation, the weather-beaten red/white/blue (Thai national colors) building decorations on the left, and especially the derelict "ghost building" on the right. These are all over the place, a result of being abandoned by the developers following the Asian financial crises in the late '90s. The low-rise, gray-sided, pink-roofed building on the right horizon is a very common style of new construction. I have no idea where specifically this is, but I can easily picture the motorway between the airport and downtown being off in the distance.
Another:
I just want to clear up any misconceptions; this is not Detroit, Michigan. (We do not have palm trees.)
Another:
This looks soooo much like home (well what home used to be; I am one of those many aliens in US). My guess is Mumbai, India. There are too many little roads (galis) and buildings crammed into small spaces to make an exact guess.
Another:
With only the light, which reminds me of Florida, and the vegetation to go on, my first thought was Mumbai, but the city in the background seemed too small be in India. I briefly considered Sao Paulo, Brazil, but images of that city did not match at all. I finally looked up "slums" and "south east asia" and found the vegetation and buildings looked very similiar in the photos of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Still a neophyte with Google Earth, I think the photo is taken from the east part of the city/suburbs. Perhaps the Rajarbagh area.
Dhaka it is. A panorama from a reader (click to enlarge):
From someone who lived there:
I've never entered the contest and I can't give any coordinates, but this took my breath away. Two years ago, my then 15-year-old son and I lived in a 5th floor walk-up for 10 months when I had a Fulbright to teach at BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He went by rickshaw and bicycle to an international school and grew up so much more than the 6 inches he added in height. Not having regular electricity, water or gas is a shock to people coming from the U.S. We watched as the building across the street rose, floor by floor with the bamboo poles that you can see criscrossing in the building in the upper-right hand corner. The plants in the buckets are probably small mango trees. I hung a lot of wash on those lines on the roof.
Another:
Easy! I knew Dhaka as quickly as I would recognize a picture of my wife (who grew up there). I suppose it *may* be another city in the same part of the world (Calcutta?) but every building there looks straight out of Dhaka. I grew up in the US, but I've had the good fortune to travel to Rangpur many times (the VFYW book contains a picture of mine from there). Whenever we go to Rangpur, we always fly in and out of Dhaka and spend a few days with my wife's family. My first thought was to say Mirpur, but my wife's gut instinct was Mogh Bazar. So let's say: Mogh Bazar Rd, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Of course I hope I win, but just seeing the picture made my day. It's been too long since I've been back to Bangladesh.
Another:
Looks like Dhaka to me, it's also the only picture I've ever seen of Dhaka that isn't teeming with people! I'd say somewhere in the Dhamondhi or Baridara areas. The address? That's going to be very hard, since the numbers are usually stuff like "Road 7, House 24".
The winner this week not only sent the most specific entry, but he is the only Dhaka respondent to have gotten a difficult window in the past, and in fact had a couple very close defeats within the past month. So the victory is especially well-deserved. He writes:
I had not realized how unique slum architecture is. After looking at slums in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hanoi, Saigon, Brazil, Jordan, and probably some others, I quickly settled on Dhaka, Bangladesh as the location. The terrain, the colors, the method of building construction, the general feeling, all matched Dhaka. Within half an hour, I had concentrated my search there.
But the way I knew for certain that it's Dhaka is because I found two more photos taken from the same building. The first one, by Larry Louie, was taken from either the same window or right below. (It was . The second one, by Nikki Linsell on Flickr, is from the same building, but higher up.
So, two photos from the same building means it's a pretty popular building, and since we're up a few floors, it's probably a hotel. Since Westerners are staying there, it's probably part of a Western hotel chain. Slogging through the hotels in Google Earth, I missed the right one a few times before finally matching up the photo with the Best Western La Vinci. Trip Advisor has a photo taken from a floor or two below, and a few rooms to the right taken from Best Western La Vincim.
So, the photo was taken from the Best Western La Vinci Hotel, 54 Kawran Bazar, Dhaka City 1215, Bangladesh. It's really hard to guess which floor, since the base of the nearby buildings isn't clearly visible in the photos. From Nikki Linsell's Flickr photo, I think the first row of solid windows in the building next door is on the seventh floor. Assuming rough parity, the photo was taken one floor above that – on the eighth floor.
This was by far the hardest one yet!
Specifics from the guy who took the photo:
View from La Vinci Hotel, 12th floor, facing east. Next to the Kawran Bazar (one of the commercial districts and the largest wholesale open market in Dhaka – produce arrives by midnight for the next day via truck stacked 10 feet high with little children on top hanging on for the ride, and likely a day's work). The incomplete construction is optically what divides Dhaka from just slightly more developed Indian cities and certainly the major cities to the east and south in to SE Asia.
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.
Many readers are respectfully protesting along these lines:
Not a big deal, but I am virtually certain that submitter of the photo gave the wrong address. I agree with the poster whose image you included near the bottom of the column (it has red arrows). Double paned windows are located between 11 and 12 Moray, but not between 10 and 11. I'm sure this seems overly obsessive, but I'm sure I'm not the only one that gets a bit obsessive about this contest. Winning a book is irrelevant, I just want to find the correct window! It's just a fun contest, and you do a wonderful job. But the correct window is between 11 and 12 Moray – I'm 99.9% certain.
The most detailed breakdown of the disparity:
Let's start with the obvious: The window in the VFYW has a dividing vertical strut. The window named has a horizontal strut (not visible in the VFYW pic) but no vertical strut. But windows can be changed. So let's look for some more permanent fixtures:
As you can see in the VFYW photo, there's a nearly direct line of sight from the window to the lantern over a white patch on the flagstones to the house with the triangle-shaped portico. The problem is that it is just not possible to draw a line over these points if the window is the window named by the submitter.
Let's look at the white smudge first: As you can see in the VFYW photo, there is a white smudge behind the lantern (marked by "A"). Directly to the right of this is a single red-hued flagstone right next to the curb (B). There are five more of these in a irregular line leading to the right (C-G). There's also a bigger white smudge close to the houses (H). If one looks closely one can also recognize a red half-flagstone (I) (All in Flagstones.jpeg – Left Panel).
If you have a look at the right panel of Flagstones.jpeg, you can clearly see (D) to (I). (A)-(C) are unfortunately covered by the Jaguar. But at least (A) and (B) can be seen in the top-down view, where they have the same relative placement to (D)-(I) as in the VFYW image (All in Flagstones.jpeg – Right Panel).
You can also see that there are no comparable discolourations in front of either 10th or 11th Moray Street (10th and 11th Moray Street.jpeg).
The house with the portico is 22 Moray Place (Lines.jpeg Top Left Panel). The lanterns are to the right of the bridges leading to the doors of 10, 11 and 12 Moray Place (Lines.jpeg Bottom Left Panel) which I numbered 1, 2 and 3 respectively. If we try to draw a line from the window the submitter mentioned over lantern (2) we can't draw a direct sight line to 22nd Moray street. Instead we always end with a front view at best of the intersection (Green lines I and II in Lines.jpeg).
If we go one window to the left (not the window mentioned by the submitter but still 11 Moray street), we can draw a line to 22nd Moray Street but it won't cross anywhere close to the discolourations seen in the VFYW photo (Green Line III in Lines.jpeg). It's also unlikely that you would have the line (B)-(G) nearly in the middle of the photo instead of at the far right border.
On the other hand it is exceedingly easy to draw a line from the window to the right of 12th Moray Street over the discolouration and lantern 1 right to 22nd Moray Street (Line IV in Lines.jpeg). This would also place (B)-(G) right in the center where they should be according to the VFYW pic.
I don't really expect a "win". After all there were lots of posters who called the first or second window to the right of 12th Moray Street. But either me or the laws of optics are slowly going crazy over here.
More than 400 entries for this week's contest, one of our most popular yet. A reader writes:
Okay, so I think that this VFYW is from Paris, in the far west of the city, along the Boulevards des Marechaux by the Square Alexandre et Rene Parodi, just down from the Place de la Porte Mailot. But that's a pretty random guess.
Another writes:
I am guessing this is somewhere around Parc de Ville, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. My first impression is that this is in Europe and the architecture looks French. It is continental Europe because they are driving on the right side of the road. Based on the cars parked on the street, it is a fairly wealthy country. The license plates resemble Luxembourg's. I was unable to find a matching location after a brief search on Google maps so I am going for somewhere around the Parc de Ville.
Another:
This looks like a photo taken near the Warandepark (Park of Brussels) near the the Royal Palace. The U.S. Embassy and many other large embassies are located near here, so I'll say this is shot taken somewhere on Place des Palais (Paleizenplein). I spent a day in Brussels this past summer on my way in back-and-forth between Paris and Brussels. The highlight of the trip was a day in Ypres, where four large battles during WWI were fought. I found the Belgians super friendly, almost the anti-French. Seeing Menin Gate, where 50,000 some odd names of the missing are etched in stone, is moving.
Another:
For the first time I had the feeling I knew the location as soon as I caught a glimpse of the photo: The Circus in Bath, England. I even knew I had once taken a photo there:
But then logic took over. No, the English cars drive (and park) the other way around. In addition, Bath had paved The Circus – no cobblestones anymore. No bushes and parking at the centre of the Cirucs. Bummer. Sorry, no idea. Must be a country where people drive on the right side of the road. Maybe the Channel Islands or Normandy. But I have to stop procrastinating now.
Another:
This is the outer circle road south of Regent's Park in London. If I'm thinking right it's the southwest corner on the other side of the boating lake. If you took that street to the right it would take you down to Baker Street tube station. I did a semester at Regent's College, in the park itself, and used to walk that road every day to the Underground.
Another:
I've enjoyed traveling the world through VFYW, which also happens to be my favorite mental health break at the office.
This is my first attempt at trying to guess the location. I think this location is in Glasgow, Scotland, a beautiful city that I visited this summer. The yellow license plates, the steering wheel on the "wrong-right" side on the black car, and the "sandstone" type building construction; all reminds me of Glasgow. This location does not look far from the Kelvin grove museum, somewhere between Sauchiehall and Great Western roads near the University of Glasgow.
Correct country. Another:
It's in one of the many loops of Edinburgh's New Town. I was just there for a vacation with my wife, and we stayed about a half mile away. I confirmed it with the taller tree in the middle of the frame, which you can find on Google Maps and the interesting street lamp. I'd try to find the exact window, but I just got off work at Kandahar Air Field, and I'm exhausted. I work with a couple Scots, and I'll be sure to show them tomorrow.
Another:
Clever photo! It's on a circular street with a park in the middle. So you drive yourself mad walking in circles trying to find the exact spot of the photo. Well I think I got it: 12 Moray Place. First window on the right (when facing the building).
Another:
In case you haven't been told already: Moray is pronounced "Murry". And the side street in your picture is Doune Terrace, which is named for the Moray family seat in Doune.
Another:
Normally I don't stand a chance at this contest, but this week, you chose a view that couldn't be easier for me. Although I live in the US now, I studied architecture at the University of Edinburgh, and the view is clearly of Moray Place, in Edinburgh's Georgian New Town.
Another:
What's most amazing – apart from the fact that I immediately recognised the town and the rough location – is that the same two cars were parked outside when I checked the address in Google Street View.
Another:
Please accept my apologies for the terseness of my earlier, rushed email. Please find attached an image indicating the window from which I think the photo was taken. The photo immediately reminded me of Edinburgh. I was there years ago as a student on summer vacation. Somehow I got invited to a university graduation party and I came across perhaps this very road while stumbling drunk back to my B&B. I remember the spot well as I had the need to jump the fence to relieve myself amongst the trees.
Another:
This is 12 Moray Place in Edinburgh, Scotland, a country I was proud to call my home for almost two years of my life. I have written to you before about the adventurous course my life has taken since I was forced to make the difficult choice between living with the Scottish woman who is the love of my life or staying in America, my former home, which does not let me and others like me in same-sex binational couples sponsor our partners for immigration. I chose to leave America, where my professional training as a doctor is recognized, and moved to Scotland so that I could share my life with the one I love.
I spent one year studying for a masters degree at the University of Edinburgh, and I walked or drove on this street on many occasions! After completing my degree, I worked briefly as a locums (part-time) trainee doctor in Scotland, but it was hard because in order to remain in the UK, I would have had to re-train for years to achieve the fully qualified status I had obtained years earlier in the US. While I miss Scotland terribly, I am happy to say that my partner and I are now living in Canada, one of the only countries that recognizes both our relationship and my professional training! What's more, because her family is in Scotland, I will still have the great pleasure of visiting there for many years to come!
Another:
I don't have many solid reasons why I should win a tie-break; actually, this is my first time entering. But, in case coincidence counts for anything, I am Andrew's younger, straighter doppelgänger: Studying at Harvard, undergrad at Oxford, and grew up in East Grinstead – well, Forest Row, but what's a couple of miles of Ashdown Forest between friends?
Another:
I initially thought the photo was taken somewhere in the UK. Then I remembered the color of the buildings from my visit to Edinburgh thirty years ago. Sure enough, with a little looking and a little luck, I stumbled upon Moray Place. With some further Google Earth help, I identified the building – the only one in that part of Moray Place with a split window that seemed obvious from the photo. By the way, there is also an oil painting entitled, "12. Moray Place" by Peter Brown:
Another:
This street in Edinburgh is quite the hidden jewel, hidden jasp, might I say. It was the great 15th century Scots poet Robert Henryson, who, though he was in his time associated with the University at Glasgow, has a substantial body of his surviving works archived at the University at Edinburgh. He made this memorable rendition of the fable of the Cock and the Jewel into Middle Scots:
O gentill iasp o rich & nobill thing, thowch I the fynd, thow ganyss nocht for me; thow art a iowell for a lord or king; it wer pite thow suld in this myddyng be beriit thus amang this muk & mold and thow so fair & worth so mekill gold
I fancy myself plucking a jasp of a coffee table book out of the dungheap of Google Maps, where I have spent my not so mickle free time this weekend.
Another:
Shallow Grave! That's what I first thought of when I saw this picture. The opening scene of the Danny Boyle movie Shallow Grave has the camera flying through streets that look quite similar to this. The movie was filmed in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, and I had a brief sidetrack looking at Glasgow.
Another:
In 1987 I was an 18-year-old guy who moved to Glasgow to go to to the University. I had to get as far away from my family and the Deep South as I could. While there I met and had a little fling with a young student at the University of Edinburgh. He had come to a debate at the Glasgow University Union one evening, where I met him, and then I made the trip over to Edinburgh (a cheap train ticket at the time) to see him in Edinburgh a few times. I think his name was Chris. It was so many years ago and the whole thing only lasted two or three weeks. It was all very exciting and scary at the same time because it was my first time to actually see someone and not just hookup and then flee. Anyway, he lived near this circle of Georgian buildings in Edinburgh. When I first saw the picture I thought it was Park Circus in Glasgow, at the top of Kelvingrove Park, where I lived at the time. But this picture isn't from Glasgow. Google street view convinced me it wasn't Park Circus. And then I remembered Chris (?) and his flat in Edinburgh. That was it. This is Moray Place. I moved home at the end of that year and enrolled in a boring state university in the US, a decision I've regretted ever since. It was an amazing time and an amazing place, though. I wonder what ever became of him.
Another:
I think this is Moray Place in Edinburgh. I recognized it because when I was there for the theatre festival years ago, there was a cruisy park near there. Lots of guys playing around in the dark late at night. The festival brings artists and theater lovers from all over the world, and it was like the United Nations of group sex out there when the bars closed.
Another:
Some close friends of mine (before decamping to the countryside to raise children) lived on this street, on the other side of the gardens visible in the left of the original image, so lots of good times had there. The gardens are private, and residents pay a nominal fee to get a key; I remember prepping lots of home baking for an open-gate garden party one time, as well as many furtive late-night excursions for a smoke. I live in Leith, which anyone familiar with Edinburgh will confirm is significantly less well-heeled than the New Town address shown here. But you well know that you get your readers from all over!
On to the exact location:
I've been a huge fan of the VFYW contest from the beginning, and reading the results has always brought some cheer and worldliness to my Tuesday lunchtime. But never before have I had any luck in guessing (as I think I have this week). I can only assume that this week's contest was incredibly easy, and that you will have an onslaught of correct guesses!
When I saw you post this week's entry, I thought immediately of the distinctive Georgian architecture of the UK's crescents and squares. Searching London and Bath via Google Maps yielded nothing that seemed like a good fit, but a Google image search led me to an apartment rental posting in Edinburgh advertising that city's unique concentration of Georgian architecture. Google Maps then led me to Moray Place, which seemed to have the right geometry:
The foreground sidewalk geometry suggests that the building from which the photo was taken is on an inside corner, narrowing it down to the ground floor of #11 or #12 Moray Place. The proximity to the lamppost suggests that it is taken from the rightmost window. Only #12 has a vertical mullion down the center of the window, making it the likely candidate.
So so close. From the submitter of the photo:
The address is 11 Moray Place, in the New Town area of Edinburgh, Scotland. It was taken from the ground floor, with the camera pointing due west, across the northern part of the circle of Moray Place. On the right you can see the junction with Doune Terrace. On the image below it's the window just to the left of the green door (entrance to no. 10), so I suppose that people might also guess 10 Moray Place. A friend used to live in this apartment, which is in a great location in the centre of the city, so when visiting home (I'm an expat Scot living in Belgium) we used to abuse his hospitality quite a bit. He's since moved out and is on a 7-month meander through Latin America, last spotted in the Chiapas region of Mexico.
About a dozen readers correctly answered 11 Moray, including two previous contest winners, but only one got a difficult window from a previous contest without securing a book yet:
Taken from 11 Moray Place, looking west around the circle, from the second window to the right of the door in the picture below. The B&B there looks to be lovely. I’ve never been to Edinburgh, and can’t tell any gripping stories about it, but there were surprisingly few circles in Britain with cobblestones, this parking pattern, and this style of architecture. Google Earth scans of London, Brighton, and Bath came up empty, and Edinburgh was next on the list.
Congrats, and thanks to everyone for the great emails – we make a point to read all of them. One more excellent entry:
I got a nice thrill when I scrolled down to see this week’s VFYW – finally, somewhere I recognise! How could I not? Edinburgh is my home town, and this photo made me realise how much I miss the beauty and the grandeur of the place, now that I live elsewhere. Moray Place is a stunning, circular street in Edinburgh’s New Town. It’s possibly my favourite part of Edinburgh, a mix of genteel Georgian charm and stately Scottish style. The area breathes history, from the micro to the macro. If you look closely, you’ll see blocked up windows on the corner house to the right of the vertical window frame, a legacy of the window tax that afflicted Scotland, England and France in the 18th and 19th century (and no, I have no idea what business it is of the government to tax windows, but there you go).
The New Town itself was built to the north of the city’s castle (and Old Town) in the mid 18th century, and was designed by a 26-year old architect named James Craig. It is mostly a simple grid pattern, in contrast to the complicated alleys, wynds, closes and back streets of the Old Town, which straddles the volcanic Castle Rock and by the 1760s had become over crowded and disease-ridden. The rich moved to the New Town, a more fitting backdrop to the Scottish Enlightenment, while the poor stayed in the Old. The Nor Loch between the Old and New Town was drained, and in the 1850s Princes Street Gardens and Waverley railway station were built in its place – Waverley was named after the famous Walter Scott novel, and is the only station in the world to be named after a work of fiction. The Old and New Towns were together designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.
I know I sound like I’m employed by the Edinburgh tourist board (honestly, I’m not), but I just love Auld Reekie. I recommend a visit, especially for the huge Scots Diaspora that now resides in the USA; I’m sure plenty of your readers in the USA have a connection to Edinburgh or Scotland. The weather may be wet and cold nearly all the time, but it is a stunning place to live.
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.
I'm digging the mix of difficult and easy window guesses. The hard ones show a level of ingenuity and persistence that should scare the NSA (or lead to a job interview there). The easier ones allow you to post a wealth of knowledge about an area that I wouldn't otherwise seek out or even run across. So in five minutes, I learned about penguins hiding under cars, apartheid, the fact that Capetown's landscape looks fantastically like Arizona's landscape, a beach destination and plummeting viral transmission in a place I may never visit, but feel like I should know better. And now I do. Thanks.
The reader who submitted this week's photo five years ago follows up with another remarkable email:
I'm now here at 3 Brunswick.
Tonight my hosts and I enjoyed reading all the guesses and comments about your contest photo. It was especially interesting to read all the different perspectives that people brought to the discussion. One thing I have to confess, which I didn't realize today until I tried to replicate the photo for you [seen above], and which one your readers correctly guessed, was that I took the photo from the balcony rather than from indoors. Sorry for cheating. But look how much the bushes have grown up in the last five years. The pickup truck is owned by my hosts. They still have it. And they're gay married, which is something South Africans can do now. AND. AND. AND … as it happens, today was their third anniversary. Will the coincidences never end?
We swear we had no knowledge of any of this; the photo was randomly selected from the Dish archives last week. Here is the reader's email from yesterday, re-posted for convenience:
Alright, alright … I'm kind of freaking out. First of all, I know exactly where that picture was taken, because I'm the guy who took it. I was an American visiting Cape Town, with my partner, who at the time lived in India. It was our first trip abroad together. We were (and still are) a same-sex bi-national couple, and I remember you included part of my letter when you published the photo, which you didn't normally do.
The second reason that I'm freaking out is that I haven't been back there since I took that photo more than five years ago, but today (Sunday), I'm going back there, back to that very same apartment. I'm writing to you from LAX. My partner's not coming along this time because he's going to India next week to visit family. But that's good news in a way, because he lives in Canada now after I moved there and sponsored his immigration.
So five years down the road, and … things do get better. Sort of. Life is complicated, and the recession sent me back to America. But we're only a few hours apart now and see each other all the time. We're not always under the same roof, but at least we're in the same time zone.
PS: The address where the photo was taken from is 3 Brunswick Ave, Tamboerskloof, Cape Town, South Africa. You can see a 3 or 4 level apartment building on the east side of the street. That's the place.
Another crazy coincidence, from the winner of contest #33, here.
indicate it's a city of some size, too. I considered South America for a bit, but it somehow had an African vibe, and the "scaffolding" on the right nicely matches some Google Image hits I came across labelled "Tanzanian scaffolding" (see 
Dhaka, Bangladesh as the location. The terrain, the colors, the method of building construction, the general feeling, all matched Dhaka. Within half an hour, I had concentrated my search there.
. The second one, by Nikki Linsell 
Western La Vinci Hotel, 54 Kawran Bazar, Dhaka City 1215, Bangladesh. It's really hard to guess which floor, since the base of the nearby buildings isn't clearly visible in the photos. From Nikki Linsell's Flickr photo, I think the first row of solid windows in the building next door is on the seventh floor. Assuming rough parity, the photo was taken one floor above that – on the eighth floor.
The Dish 