Category: Contest

A reader writes:

Sometimes it snows in April, as Prince sang.

Looks like a small- to medium-sized city in the upper Midwest (minivans, gently sloping streets, late Victorian buildings, possibly a grain elevator on the horizon) where there was a big snow event on the weekend of April 16-17. I’m guessing it’s Wisconsin or Michigan because I got snow here in Minnesota on the 16th and the storm moved on by the 17th. Green Bay, Wisconsin?

Another writes:

This looks like my hometown of Buffalo, NY. I haven’t the inclination to zoom in, check out the license plates or try to find that distinctive building on the right, but the tree looks right, the sky looks right, and it feels like home. And I remember my mother complaining about it snowing a couple of weeks ago.

Another:

When I saw this week’s photo with the date “April 17,” I immediately thought, “That was OUR weather on April 17!” I live in State College, PA, so I started looking close by. I checked out Altoona but couldn’t find anything close, then googled church steeples in Pittsburgh. I believe I’ve found the church spire in the photo, even with a similar building in the distance: St. John Vianney in Pittsburgh. It is on Climax Street, near Allen Street. Unfortunately, I could not find a neighboring street that had the right configuration of traffic lights, parking lots, and buildings.

Another:

I know from talking to my family back home that Michigan got a pretty heavy mid-April snow. And I see a Cadillac, some Fords, and maybe a Dodge in the back of the parking lot; that high a ratio of American-made cars screams Michigan. That strange building looks vaguely ski-lodge-like, so probably in the northern part of the lower peninsula. Maybe near Nub’s Nob in Harbor Springs?

Another:

This is looking west on Third Avenue in downtown Spokane, Washington. And yes, the weather has been this crappy until recently.  If you were going to choose the most unflattering photo of our little gem of a city one could find, you could have done no better. Ugh. But thanks for the international exposure.

Another:

This looks like the easiest VFYW ever, but after 4 hours, I still have no idea.

Cue Dish follower who lives next door, got married in the Episcopal Church, used to skate in that hockey arena, and painted those signal poles yellow.

Another:

I won’t be able to guess the exact location, being sidetracked by OBL’s killing, but I’ll give the general location. I spent some time in the transportation industry and one thing I learned is that states usually put their own unique details on traffic control devices, so I bypassed some other clues to hone in on the traffic signals.  The yellow poles and yellow mast arms are found in North Dakota, Fargo in particular. So I say Fargo.

Close. Another:

Something about that picture caught my eye, then I looked closer and realized it’s my former home town – Minot, North Dakota.

A few dozen readers correctly guessed Minot. One writes:

Oh it’s a beautiful day here in the Upper Midwest. The beautiful April snowfall, block streets and Wells Fargo Bank sign are all important clues.  At first I thought this might be Minnesota or perhaps Wisconsin. The key of course is the “Main Medical” sign. A few google searches brought me to the Emergency/Trauma facility at Trinity Hospital, which is kitty-corner from the “Main Medical Building” at 315 S. Main Street in Minot.  And this is exactly why Google Street View was developed!

Another:

Woo-hoo. Got my first one! This was taken from Trinity Hospital, One West Burdick Expressway, Minot, North Dakota, USA:

The intersection pictured is Burdick Expressway and South Main Street. I don’t know the precise hospital room window from which the photo was taken, but I guess that it was from the top floor.

Another:

The VFYW contest gets me through most Saturday nights when I pull the night shift with our newborn daughter. This week was a winner. As a civil engineer, I was most caught by the yellow mast arms for the traffic lights. North Dakota DOT mandates that all mast arms be yellow, which then only left a couple cities. Then I narrowed it down to Minot and the hospital from which the photo was taken.  I can’t help but think that the snow on such a late day in 2011 hopefully brought a smile to the patient or family member of the patient in that room.

Our daughter’s nursery is travel themed and stocked with books of all the places we hope she’ll see. A VFYW book would be a great addition!

Another:

I wouldn’t even have known how to start without the date and the weather.  That led me to this weather map:

Among Wyoming, northern Montana, North Dakota, and the UP, I went with North Dakota because of the flatness and because I could just barely see a grain elevator in the background.  I felt like I was on the right track after seeing the bright yellow traffic light poles in various towns in the state.  This is the first time I’ve even taken a stab at one of these (long-time reader, first-time window-guesser!), and I have never spent so much time on Google Maps in my life.

Another sends an screenshot from Google Maps:

Another:

I’m a first-timer. I’ve never been there and have no connection whatever to the place. I guessed it was somewhere in the U.S., a not very large town far enough west for a Wells Fargo and far enough north for a spruce tree, pretty flat and pretty windy, since there are few other trees. I thought the date was a good clue, but it snowed all over the country on that day, so it was kind of a dead-end for me.

At first I zoomed in on Fargo, which has the right kind of yellow street-signal posts, but it’s too big of a town. Figuring I was in the right state, I looked for other ND towns with a Wells Fargo downtown. I picked Minot for no reason, but once I saw the vertical stripes on the Wells Fargo building in Google Street View, I knew I found it. I hunted around for the building with the MM logo, which is the Main Medical building. The hospital is on the other corner. The big house-looking building across the street is a funeral home: a little too convenient.

Another:

The white building in the background on the left-hand side is recognizable as a Wells Fargo branch, because of their trademark red background and yellow letters on the bank’s logo. From there, I was able to narrow down my search to North Dakota branches of Wells Fargo, who has a distinctively strong presence in various small cities’ skylines from Lubbock to Lincoln. Once I was able to nail down the Minot branch (photo attached), I took a stroll down Main St via Google StreetView and imediately recognized the Main Medical Building on the lower right corner of the contest picture.

Another:

I must have looked at 500 different steeples in MN, WI, IA, and God knows however many other Upper Midwestern states, but I finally decided to search for <<“main medical” downtown former building theater>>.  Lo and behold, an article in the Minot Daily News came up, and a quick street view revealed good ol’ Minot has those yellow traffic light poles.  So I did a search of “cathedrals” nearby Minot. BANG – there are my four white little fellows atop Saint Leo’s Catholic Church.

Here’s a very similar photo circa 1994 from the aforementioned news article. Looks like it was taken from a couple windows down toward the intersection:

Another:

Unfortunately, I don’t have an interesting story about Minot or Trinity Hospital, and can’t say I’ve been there, but Quentin Burdick was the first Democrat elected to Congress from North Dakota and Minot’s nickname is “The Magic City.”

Among the dozens of correct guessers this week, only two have guessed challenging views in the past without winning. To break the tie, we’re going to award the prize to the reader who has participated in every window contest to date. He writes:

I have to say, I had an odd route to finding this spot, and it was a miracle that I homed in on it so quickly. I was searching for Swiss-style funeral homes, then Lutheran funeral homes, which got me to Minot. A random photo of downtown Minot showed the same yellow traffic lights and similar buildings. From there, Google Maps dropped me right in front of the medical center.

No, I won’t calculate which window of the Trauma Center we’re in, nor where in the room the photographer had to be standing, because I already did that for Duluth, placing the photographer’s exact location in 3-dimensional space to within a couple feet, and it didn’t do me any good. So no more geometric Visio diagrams for you until I win a book, buddy!

It’s on its way.

(Archive)

This photo was taken on April 17.

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:

The area suggests tropical or semi-tropical. The tall hills are also interesting, and the one in the center is very tall (mountain perhaps?). Strange though – no people, no cars, what gives? The housing suggests European influences and the verandas on the roof tops indicate areas people go for entertainment. The spiral staircases are metal. I’ve never been to Australia, but I have found a great deal of photos of red tiled homes there, so that’s my guess. Queensland is as close as I can come.

I gotta get out more in the world.

Another:

Construction and lush greenery is definitely of the Balkans. Brightly colored houses suggest an Albanian population. The mountains don’t suggest the Mediterranean climate of coastal Albania, and the interior of the country is far too poor for that much new construction. So I’ll go with an Albanian town in Macedonia, where the Albanian population is wealthy, and likes to show it off. I could pick Gostivar or Kicevo, but I’ll go with Tetovo.

Another:

The building on the right is clearly a Pizza Hut. So I googled for a picture of Pizza Hut and the first one that came up is in Frostburg, MD, which I took to be a sign. However, when I kept googling, I found out that they have Pizza Huts in Costa Rica. And that background looks Costa Rica-ish. So it might be in Costa Rica. But I notice that there are a lot of buildings that have the red roof thing going on, so it occurred to me that this might be the corporate headquarters for Pizza Hut, which is in Dallas, TX.

I didn’t win, did I?

Another:

Probably not even close, but it feels like Da Lat, Viet Nam.  The mountains, the mist, the terraced farms.  Throw in what looks like old restored French villas, and that is my final guess.

Almost married a beautiful girl from there when I was a young idealistic fool.  I would pick her up from school and we’d go for strolls along those very same fields when she got out of class.  Could not have been a more romantic city.  It’s currently a hot spot for Vietnamese honeymooners, though it was “discovered” by Alexander Yersin, the French/Swiss immunologist who also discovered the bubonic plague, yersinia pestis.  Yersin popularized Da Lat as a retreat destination, and in its heyday was quite chic with French vacationers.

Another:

Is this Dalat, the Swiss Alps of Southeast Asia? Everything about the scene screams Vietnam to me. The brick wall is very typical, as is everything about the buildings, from the bamboo supporting the drying concrete to the water tanks on the roofs. The white buildings with red roofs is particularly popular in Dalat:

Another:

The solar hot water heaters on the roofs of the buildings are popular in both China and Taiwan.  The fog and mountains appear more Taiwan than China.  Also, all flat land is used in Taiwan.  The country is 80% mountains so the country’s 22 million people and their agriculture must squeeze into an area much smaller than Los Angeles. As for the city, Taipei is too dense for such an area, so I’ll guess Jhongli City.

Another:

This one was one of the most puzzling, ever!

I’ve always, at least, gotten the right continent, but this time I’m not even sure of that. Very fertile, lush, new expensive construction with strange water handlers atop the buildings. Looks like new money coming into a place with not a lot of infrastructure. So with that, I’m going with China. Maybe around HK or Schenzen. But it’s a big country and I’m outta time.

Another:

I’m sure there will be plenty of guesses in China for this week’s contest, with the distinctive looking buildings. I’m guessing Kunming, Yunnan, because the larger buildings suggest a wealthy suburb, and Kunming is the only city in Yunnan that generates that kind of wealth, and the geography looks sub-tropical, like that of Yunnan province. But I’m also guessing Kunming because it’s centrally located in the province and has a good chance of being close if I’m wrong.

Another:

This just screams China. The solar panels are a dead giveaway, and the worn-down buildings alongside pristine megamansions probably means this view is from one of the hundreds of developments shooting up in the exurbs of major cities. Here’s an excellent Aussie news segment on the China housing bubble that likely resulted in this neighborhood:

But like I said, this kind of neighborhood can be found all around China. All I could figure was that the lush vegetation pointed to somewhere southern. Fortunately I have a bit of an advantage, as I’m currently living in China. I just moved into an apartment a couple days ago, so I called over my still-somewhat-reserved roommates and asked if they had any ideas. We’ve spent the last hour using our collective Google/Baidu skills trying to locate somewhere environmentally similar to this locale. We settled on Longyan City in Fujian province, China. Specifically, we’re going with Huodekeng village in Yanshan county, though that part’s a complete shot in the dark.

Though we’re probably way off, thanks for a great roomie bonding session! Our apartment was just furnished yesterday, so if we win we’ll have our very first coffee table book.

Another:

This one reminds me of a story I heard about overseas Chinese sending money back to their home villages that is used to build elaborate houses in the Fujian area opposite Taiwan. These houses end up sitting mostly empty as those who found success to pay for them stay overseas and there is little extended family left back home. I pick Huatingzhen because it looks like a valley with plenty of red tiled roofs with lots new development just southest of Xiamen. (I’m a previous winner, so it was just fun to post a guess based on a hunch.)

Another:

There’s tons of places in the Himalayas, and tons of places that aren’t in the Himalayas, that look like this, so this is basically a wild guess. I think those buildings in the foreground are a brewery/distillery. That would explain the big black tank atop one of them, and the other vaguely industrial stuff atop the other. That might make this nearer Kasauli, India, but I like Gangtok better.

Other countries that this could be: China, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, maybe even Nepal (although Nepal seems mostly drier and colder than this).

Another:

This is a view of Kathmandu, Nepal. The geography is exactly like Kathmandu Valley. The houses are very colorful, which is a cultural theme of Nepal. There is no urban planning in Nepal, and this picture shows houses constructed in haphazard way. This is definitely Kathmandu.

Another:

Kathmandu with 98% certainty. I would know this view – odd narrow houses with multiple levels, separated by diverse small crop plots, surrounded by misty mountains – anywhere. But where in the outskirts of Kathmandu? I’d guess the western Chhauni neighborhood. I wish I could vigorously search out the exact window, but it’s Easter and I have already been gone from my girlfriend’s family for too long.

Another:

I know someone else is going to give you the exact ward and chowk (probably not the street address, since those are seldom in Nepal), but if I had to guess it looks like the slightly posher western edge of the city. Maybe I’ll get extra credit as my fiancee and I are headed there for our wedding next week! Thanks for the reminder to pack a raincoat.

Another:

While perusing Google Earth to look at the suburban/rural area north of the city of Kathmandu, I stumbled across a Panoramio photo that looks like it captures some of the same ridge during the dry season.  It calls the village Bhudanilkhanta. Since your other readers are unbelievably precise with locations, I’m going to gamble on trying to get close and guess it’s near the center of the attached Google Earth screen grab, at the coordinates 27?-46’-04.72”N,  85?-21’-26.89”W:

A down-to-the-wire entry:

Finally, the picture I have been waiting for. I have followed the contest since its very inception but haven’t sent in a single entry because I usually haven’t the slightest clue where the pictures are from. I am not very well traveled, so I don’t usually have the “this reminds me of the time I went to ____” reactions and I haven’t really had the time to put my internet sleuthing skills to test. But this one – I would be shocked if I weren’t right about this.

This is Kathmandu, Nepal. The Kathmandu nouveau riche architecture, black water tanks on top of the houses, the terraced rice fields, the chalky hills – all point to the fact that this was photograph was taken on the outer edge of Kathmandu. More specifically it is the northern part of the valley, outside the Ring Roads (a set of concentric road ways that circumscribe the denser center of the valley. The neighborhood is either Budhanilkantha or Narayanthan but is definitely north of Bansbari. The hill in the background is part of the Shivapuri hills and the white scar on the hill in the background is most likely a road that links Narayanthan to a town neigborhood/town named Tokha.

Now I am sure that many of your readers will send in correct entries with maps and even a picture of the window it was taken from. But know this – I went to boarding school not 500 metres from here from ages 10-18. It has been eight years since I have been to Kathmandu and the place didn’t look like this when I was there. It was all rice fields. I might have even planted the trees in the background for one of our schools reforestation outings.

Okay, that was it. It is Tuesday 8:57 out here in California. I hope I made it by your deadline of noon your time.

Such a wonderful and precise guess, and so close to winning, but we have to award the prize this week to the only Kathmandu guesser who just barely lost in the past:

I came so close last week I couldn’t resist trying again. Solar hot water on the roof, but no satellite dishes.  High altitute hill fog.  Hot money inflows going to big houses.  Chalk scar on the hillside.  Poor urban planning and control.  British style windows.  Rice paddies …

I struggled.  Then my son glanced at it and said “Nepal”.  He’s never been there; he just said it.

I went rooting around images of Nepal, finding similar British windows, and recent housing developments in deep valleys floored with fertile rice paddies.  At first I thought it would be Sundarijal, but I couldn’t get the hills to match.  Finally I came across Budhanilkantha.

I found the hill with the two different tree heights on the slope, and then the yellow building with the red rectangle between the two white buildings.  I won’t be able to find the window that took the photo this week.  I suspect that where the window is now was rice paddy a year back.  Attached is a picture of the same scene with some of the details, before development of the VFYW foreground buildings.  I’ve put an arrow in the rice paddy where the window should be:

Someone on the ground can do better, but this is as good as it gets from my laptop. Thanks for the great contest.  Better than an Easter egg hunt.

(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.

The reader who submitted this week’s window judges the finalists:

I had a chuckle reading these. Rather eerily, three readers identified my flat and provided pictures. Two identified my bathroom window. Unfortunately, my wine bottles are aligned along the window sill in the kitchen. The winner is therefore the reader who submitted the picture below:

May I suggest that one other reader deserves kudos for building such a good profile of yours truly:

Who leaves a full bottle of wine on a window sill? Answer: Forgetful old people    like my parents, and young folks, who are careless about alcohol. Well, my parents still can’t attach a digital photo to an email and would forget to send it anyway, so it must be a student, probably male, probably unshaven, probably with a sink full of dishes just outside the frame.

Student: check. Male: check. Unshaven: check. But sink full of dishes? I’m flattered they assume I can cook.

A reader writes:

Are you kidding me? Can we at least have ONE contest where those of us that are not well-traveled have SOME hope of getting it right? Give me Wrigley Field, where the person has to guess what seat it was captured from. Geez Louise …

Anyway, my guess is some semi-historic location with snow, chimneys, windows, hills, trees, antennae and a satellite dish with a building under construction in the background.  Am I close?

Heh. Another writes:

My first attempt at one of these. The row houses are similar to those in Toronto, and after a quick search to verify that Casa Loma is undergoing restoration (hence the scaffolding), I made Toronto my guess.

Another:

I am going to make an educated guess and say the location is in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia, Georgia.  The cold/snow, vegetation, terrain and shelled building are a dead giveaway that this place is in the Caucasus (a place where many of the current cold-climate conflicts are going on right now, or in recent years). A reasonable guess might also be Kurta, S. Ossetia, but every building in Kurta was destroyed in the 2008 conflict (a war crime, I’m sure).  That is not evident here.  Another guess might be Dagestan, but I don’t want that to be my official guess, so I’m sticking with Tskhinvali.

Another:

The whole picture gives an eastern Europe feel to me.  The car looks European as well – a BMW?  The bottle of wine will make me guess somewhere more southern – perhaps the former Yugoslavia? I know it snows pretty heavily in Banja Luka, so I suppose that guess is better than any other I could make.

Another:

The one fat obvious clue makes this one easy.

Wine bottles of that particular olive shade are the product of Baltic Sea sand and, since the late 15th century, are mostly manufactured on the peninsula west of Riga. Ah, but that’s a misdirection, because while they’re made in Latvia, they’re almost all exported through Stockholm, even today, due to lingering effects of the short-lived trade embargo of 1962 (look it up).

As everyone knows, however, Swedish wine sucks, so we’re looking for a secondary market, and that means Hungary. Now for the second clue: Who leaves a full bottle of wine on a window sill? Answer: Forgetful old people like my parents, and young folks, who are careless about alcohol. Well, my parents still can’t attach a digital photo to an email and would forget to send it anyway, so it must be a student, probably male, probably unshaven, probably with a sink full of dishes just outside the frame.

But that doesn’t narrow it down much, so here’s where I get strategic. I bet most of the entries are going to say Budapest, home of Moholy-Nagy University, or maybe Gyor, where they sell cheap Tokajis from vending machines in the student center. So I’m going to hedge and go with the leading destination for Magyar exchange students and say Bratislava, Slovakia.

My first ever VFYW entry, and I’m pretty sure I nailed it. Can’t wait to read the crazy guesses of my competitors!

Another:

I believe this photo was taken in Valkenburg, Netherlands, during the annual Christmas Market, which is said to be the oldest and largest in Europe.  The Market is held in a series of underground passages and caves which were created when the original rock was mined for Valkenburg Castle, built in 1115.  The passages and caves were used as a hiding place for Jews and others who were hiding from the Nazis during the German Occupation of WWII.  All the proceeds from the Christmas Market are used for the restoration of Valkenburg Castle, which is ongoing and indicated by the scaffolding around the castle.

Sorry, I can’t point to the window from which the view is taken, but I think the story of the Valkenburg Resistance is a very interesting one.  Amazing to me is the fact that after the war members of the Valkenburg Resistance opted to keep their activities secret so as not to brag.  Fortunately, at some point, the personal archive of Pierre Schunck, one of the resistance leaders, became public and the Valkenburg Resistance now occupies its rightful place in history.

Photo of the Christmas market by Chris Friese. Another:

After googling “castle restoration” a bit, I decided that the profile of Ludlow Castle sort of matched the one in the photo, and – better yet – the streets of Ludlow Village are adorned with pastel-coloured houses. Alas, after zooming around in Google Street View for a half-hour, I couldn’t quite find a match-up. Most of the pastel houses near the castle are three-storey, not two, and the more I compare the profiles of the two castles the less they seem to match.

Another:

A nice way to spend a snowy afternoon here in northern Michigan is looking at photos of snowy castles in England. Why England?  The houses, maybe. But I’ve just spent an hour looking at tourist sites and Google Street View, to no avail. So I’m going to a hazard a guess of Lancaster, England.

Another:

Looks to me like a place that doesn’t get snow regularly, by the planters and the fact that there’s still snow on the window pane bottom – probably a rarity. Also, lots of deciduous trees and not many evergreens. The car looks like an Audi. I’m going to say Belfast, Northern Ireland because of the pastels.

Another:

According to my future son-in-law, that is probably an Audi A6 Avant.  He also said that knowing that information is probably useless, as that car is available pretty much world wide.  However, his observation that the car is on the left side of the road could be very useful.  So I narrowed my search for castles to the UK and Ireland.  That does appear to be a castle’s Bailey with perhaps a Keep on the inside, and some scaffolding that seems to be typical for other castle renovations such as Clun Castle in Shropshire.  But after a look at images of all the castles in the UK I could find, I hit a stone wall.  And here I’ll stay and simply guess that the view is of a castle in England.

If, on the other hand, the car is parked illegally, and I have been searching in the wrong countries, I will consider it my Dishly duty to report the scofflaw to the relevant authorities once the location has been revealed.

Not England or Ireland, but close. Another:

My guess is Oystermouth Castle, in Mumbles, Wales, possibly from Café Valence Bar And Rooms on Newton Street. If I even get the country correct, I will be satisfied. I had no idea there were so many castles in the UK. Now I know.

Six other readers correctly guessed Oystermouth. One writes:

It has to be the UK – the terraced houses and the Sky TV dish give that away. Plus it did snow heavily there in December. Those are clearly allotment sheds in the background up against the castle wall. Can’t be many places where that happens. A quick Google search reveals that Oystermouth Castle has allotments up against the walls and is in pretty much the style and state of ruination shown. A picture is attached.

Seems to match the roof line shown in the photograph. I think yourpicture is looking towards the castle from a window in the terrace behind the one shown towards the bottom right of that aerial view. To cap if off, the BBC has pictures here, including one showing the castle under scaffolding, as shown in your picture, in January.

Another:

I can’t believe I actually found this place. The architecture seemed very Irish to me (I grew up in Ireland). The buildings looked very inner city Dublin but the ruins where throwing me off. There is nothing on a hill like that in Dublin that I am aware of. The December weather was a helpful clue.

I expanded my search for city center ruins on Google and by chance came across Oystermouth Castle. I went to street level and found some streets that looked similar to the VFYW contest photo. The house colors and the satellite dish were the giveaway. All that was left was to find the right window from the correct house on the opposite side of the street.  It’s a building on Newton road. I’m pretty certain I got the right window.

Another:

Ruined castle, terraced houses: it had to be Wales, right? I was ready to search through the entire list of Welsh castles but luckily the allotments at the left of the picture were a giveaway; it was the eighth Google result for “allotments castle wales”. In Google Street View the row of houses in the foreground is Castle Street. Turning round we see the backs of the row of houses on Newton Road, and it’s clearly one of the windows I’ve indicated on the screenshot, due to the position of the Sky dish and the fact that the window is in line with the staircase between the houses. Moving round the front, it’s fairly straightforward to identify the room as being above the Jones clothes shop on Newton Road.

I’m not expecting to win, because I’ve only got the Green Line window correct before, and neither do I have a good anecdote about the time I visited Swansea. However, as an expat Welshman I’m just happy to see views of my country popping up from time to time.

Another:

I’m so excited I finally tracked down a window! I knew this was Wales immediately, but had no idea beyond that.  The extensions on the backs of the terraced houses are clearly bathrooms added in the 1960s and 1970s when indoor plumbing enjoyed a government subsidy.  I spent some time searching on 2 bedroom terraced houses with castle views, but no joy.  My partner tried to find a ruined castle undergoing renovations, but there are hundreds of those around Wales.

My partner gave the most important clue when he noted the garden allotments with all their sheds under the wall of the castle.  I was reading your blog again this evening and showed the contest to my sons.  Searching on “castle ruin allotments” to show them how it was done led me to this image of Oystermouth Castle and allotments in Mumbles, Swansea.  Google maps led me to Castle Street.  Streetview confirmed the terraced houses opposite as being the same as in the contest picture.  When I turned the view around from the cottages, I could see telephone lines from the pole, and then the exact window, with the satellite dish and antenna on the roofs in front.  Whoo hoo!

I then went around to the front of the building, navigating by the red building two roofs over, to find the number of the house.  The shop and door didn’t have a number in Streetview, but a search for the Jones shop name led to 61 Newton Road, Mumbles, Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales, SA3 4BL.

Attached are the screenshots I took of the front of the building, the back with the window (labelled “This is the window facing Oystermouth Castle!  VFYW 16/04/11”) and the three terraced houses opposite.

Thanks for the fun!

The winner of this week’s contest has been the most difficult to determine yet, since neither of the three most precise guessers have correctly guessed a challenging view in the past, thus providing a tie-breaker.  We have yet to hear back from the reader who submitted the photo to find out the precise window, so we will contact the winner and send him or her the prize when we do. See everyone else at noon on Saturday!

(Archive)

This photo was taken in December. 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:

The scene has a “developing country” look and feel. That, and the mountainous terrain, and the flags (Nepal’s flag has the most unique shape in the world, two triangles one below the other) indicate that this is Nepal. I’ll just go with Kathmandu, the capital.

Another writes:

The first thing I thought of when I saw the picture was the Casbah in Tangier, Morocco. I was just there a few months ago on a trip I took while studying in Madrid. The buildings don’t look quite the same, but I guess they could be from the newer part of the city. We spent most of our time getting lost in the historic city center, getting accosted by people wanting to be our “guide” for a couple hundred dirhams.

Another:

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas? That looks like Blackbeard’s castle on top of the hill, and the in need of repair apartment buildings look like many I saw when I visited there a couple of years ago. Every time I see a colorful hillside on what appears to be an island, I will continue to guess St. Thomas, even if I’m always wrong.

Another:

Tbilisi, Georgia? I’ve got Sarajevo and Tel Aviv right, and I only play when I think I’ve been to the location.  Some friends and I climbed up to the tower in the picture, and to the right, out of the frame, ought to be a large cross made from tin panels. It’s the land and tower that I think I recognize, the apartments could be anywhere from Tegulcigulpa to Bucharest.

Of all the Eastern Europe capitols I visited, Tbilisi was the most impoverished seeming. Politically, its government displays flags showing membership in the EU and NATO, yet their actual relationship with those organization seems not as strong as the displays would indicate. Booksellers and painters abound on the sidewalks, and my friend bought a book of poetry written in Georgian. Georgian has its own script which is quite attractive, yet illegible to those of use used to the script with which we write English. The poetry turned out to have been written by Stalin, who remains popular with the old folks scratching out a living on the sidewalks selling trinkets, nuts and poetry.

Another:

I’m racing to finish up my Master’s thesis, so I have no time to hunt on Google Maps or whatever else the savants who win this game week after week do to be so spectacularly accurate with their guesses. However, this looks exactly like Lebanon to me.  Part of me wants to say Batroun or somewhere up north, but i’m going with my gut and saying Beirut. If I’m wrong, I’ll trade you a copy of my soon-to-be finished thesis for a VFYW book.

Another:

Were it not for my girlfriend’s unabashed love for her parents’ native country, Brazil, I would have nothing to submit here. But with the elementary lessons in Brazilian culture and geography I’ve received from her, I can say with about 40 percent certainty that this is Rio. Or possibly Sao Paulo. I think. It is customary to hang laundry to dry in Brazil, so that was one hint. The steep, green hills that tower over the crusty old buildings resemble the outskirts of Rio, perhaps even the favelas. But I can’t identify that beige structure in the back … grrr.

Another:

Well, once again I see you’re chosen a devilishly difficult view this week.

I’m wondering what kind of deal you made with Google to have them scrub all images of the church and tower on the hill.  And you, no doubt, selected a community that does not have street view available, which really didn’t matter since I couldn’t find the church, or tower, or iglesia, or torre, or fort or …

The pink blouse, or is it long johns, hanging from the clothesline was perhaps a clue of where not to look rather than where to look.  The orange satellite dishes excited me though,and seemed to be a solid clue.  I believed they were from the company Televes.  If so, according to their website, that narrowed my search to Spain, Italy, France, the UK, Poland, Portugal, Germany, and Russia.  From that small bit of geography, I’m tempted to say the shot was taken somewhere in Spain.

However, there has been a sighting of an orange dish in the previous view from Dasmascus and for that reason alone, since I have nothing better, I’m guessing the Middle East somewhere.  Slightly more specifically, somewhere along your route as you slouch toward Bethlehem:

Another:

This one proved difficult, as usual, until I saw a sign on one of the apartments, saying “Vende” – “For sale” in Spanish. That obviously limited my option to Spanish-speaking countries, but that could have been anywhere. However, the other interesting clue was the orange satellite dish. After many many attempts on Google, I found a Spanish company, called Televes, which has exactly those dishes (a picture can be found in this link).

So, looking at the location of this company I found they are in Santiago de Compostela, La Coruña España, so that is my guess. Though I tried to find the amazing church/fortress up the hill in images from that area, I couldn’t find any that looked just like it. But I’m definitely sure another reader will …

Another:

Spain.  This has to be Spain.  My wife and I just took a train from Seville to Granada and those apartment buildings in the lower right-hand corner of the photo with the light orange/tan exteriors and white and red trim are a dead give-away regarding these parts.  Unfortunately, I also saw that paint scheme outside of Barcelona, so I can’t give a definite city with much confidence.  But I’m going with Granada because of the desert like hills in the background.

‘Tis Spain. Specifically:

Cullera, Spain. The landscape is unmistakably Mediterranean. And the “VENDE” sign is the Spanish equivalent for “FOR SALE,” so it’s most likely Spain. Since I’m not very familiar with Spain, I used the “terrain” view in Google Maps to look around Valencia since it faces the Mediterranean due east. The coastline is mostly flat in the area except for in one spot as you work your way south, in Cullera. The site of the town and the hill overlooking it looked like a match. Turning on the “photos” feature confirmed it.

With the help of Street View, I was able to get the general area of where the picture was taken. The attached screen cap of the Street View shows the apartment building with green accents in the VFYW photo, with the yellow building beyond:

If I had to guess, I would say it’s taken from the building directly above the word “castellana” (lighter-colored roof). I’m being as specific as possible because I’ve barely lost a couple of these before by being less-specific!

Three other readers correctly guessed Cullera. One writes:

Thanks for so many clues! It’s embarrassing that I’ve never been able to map a US picture, but it may be more fun to armchair travel to other places. Lots of googling to narrow it down to the alley parallel to Calle Miguel Hernandez, just east. The cross street is Calle Caminas del Homens. I think the building that the picture was taken from was still being built when Google maps went through, so I’m sending a picture of the construction site and the building to be put there. You can see the hole where the building is being built and across the street the the green and pink building as well as the yellow one:

Another:

My guess is that the picture was taken from a window looking to the inside yard at the eight or ninth floor of either number 13 or number 15, at Calle Caminàs dels Homens, in Cullera, Valencia, Spain. The window looks north but the picture was taken towards the west, upwards to the Santuario de la Virgen del Castillo, a church built beside a XIIIth Century Castle.

I do not have any particular story about Cullera, where I have never been, so I will only tell you about my search, which was quite easy because the buildings in the picture have a very strong Spanish feeling to them. Combined with the vegetation in the hill, this was cryng out “Spanish Mediterranean”. So it took me only a couple of minutes to type (in Spanish) “church fortress Spanish Mediterranean” in Google Images, and there it was, fifth result: the Virgen del Castillo Sanctuary in Cullera, Valencia.

It was much more difficult to find the exact place where it was taken from. The tower below the church gave a good reference point to calculate the area, to the SE from the church, with a similar view of the hill. But I was fooled by the balcony with a sign of “Se vende”, which made me think that those balconies belonged to a façade over a street. They had to be on the west side of a north-south street, lookin to the east. I could not find anything like that in Google Street View, until after a long while I finally discovered the building, looking the wrong way, to the West. Then a little “walk” to the East allowed me to see that interior façade (towards the yard) looked like the one to the street. So this must be it.

When I saw “Pensión Castellana” in number 13 I imagined some young American with a tight budget spending some days there, but I think the Pensión only occupies the first and second floor of the building, so it must not be there.

Anyway, I hope I am right.

One more:

I think I was lucky to find the castle/church on a quick Google search (that it might be Spain was a guess). The exact window, however, is a lot more difficult … I make this as somewhere on the Avenida Veinticinco de Abril, around about no. 101. The water tank or whatnot partway down the slope lines up with our window, wherever it is, so I’ve drawn a line through that; it strikes a series of buildings on the Avenida. The viewpoint also seems to take in the buildings on the right, and those buildings in the foreground, which gives me some pause about my exact placement. I’m sure with better satellite pictures I could get closer, but I think I’m pretty close.

This is the third one I think I’ve cracked, though unlike the two previous (Paris, Barcelona), I don’t have an exact window. I’m also beginning to worry that I can only get Western European answers. I should get those, studying European History in the UK, but the many from other parts of the world that I can’t get close to has made clear to me how little I know about the rest of the world. The Dish, providing yet another form of perspective!

Of those four correct guessers, two have correctly guessed a difficult window view in the past without winning (the other two will now be added to that short-list).  However, we have yet to hear back from the reader who submitted the photo, so we don’t have a precise location in Cullera with which to determine the winner this week. As soon as we hear back, we will send him or her the prize.

See everyone else on Saturday for the next contest!

Update from the submitter of the photo:

The address is 15 Avenida Caminas del Homens, out my kitchen window on the tenth floor (one of the first things I see).  The second-to-last emailer you posted had it closest, though the dude who guessed that it was Bethlehem, but taken at the Sphinx, made me snort my coffee.  Dish readers really are an amazing lot.

One such reader wrote after the results were posted:

I just thought I’d point out that aside from the VENDE sign and the presence of the orange satellite dishes, there is another revealing clue (or should I say clues) in this picture. That would be the angle of the satellite dishes. Since TV satellites are necessarily in geosynchronous orbits, and these orbits are also equatorial, satellite dishes always have to point toward to equator. From this you can easily deduce that this picture was taken facing WNW. Since the slopes of the distant mountain are vegetated and cut by an ancient stream (or creek), it would not be hard to deduce that said stream or creek would be flowing east toward the sea (which would be the case in Mediterranean Spain). Taken together these clues could rapidly narrow down a search for the exact location and orientation of the window, in addition to the time of day the photo was taken.

(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.

For new Dish readers who just discovered us through the Beast, every week we hold a contest to see who can guess the location of a reader-submitted window view. We post a new one every Saturday at noon – see here for the latest example and an explanation of the rules. On Tuesday we post the results and the winner gets a free The View From Your Window book, a curated compilation we published through Blurb, a print-on-demand company. Regarding the above photo, a reader writes:

My first thought was: This one is impossible. With more examination, however, details start to emerge … ice, bare deciduous trees, a barrier island, some industry, a distant shore, and the view is from some open-air rustic (stone?) lookout with a railing at a high vantage point.  So my second thought was: it should be fairly easy to find this with a little searching for high-latitude barrier islands on bodies of water about 10 to 15 miles across. Alas, after spending a long time searching northern and southern maps, I have to return to my first thought:  This one is impossible!

Still, a guess: Somewhere on the St. Lawrence River, perhaps near Trois Pistoles, Canada?

Another writes:

My first thought was, “That looks like the far north end of Northernmost Northlandia.” Since I actually have no idea where it is, I googled “Northernmost Town in the World,” and the answer was Hammerfest, Norway. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it – like a warm tongue to a frozen lamp post in Hammerfest.

Another:

I’ve tried to guess before (ALWAYS wrong) but this is the first time I’m sending in an actual entry. My guess is Pickering, Ontario. This looks like freshwater to me, and the ice is familiar from my documentation of ice on Lake Michigan (I take and post a picture of Lake Michigan nearly everyday, in all seasons). The “silo” in the front looks vaguely like the Pickering nuclear power plant (but not really). I’m going to Toronto tomorrow, so I will look for something like this from the air above one of the three Great Lakes I’ll be flying over and resend with a more accurate guess!

Another:

I just returned to the US after spending three years in Tromso, Norway, so that’s my guess.  Located about 200 miles above the Arctic Circle, Tromso is a beautiful, modern city of nearly 70,000 inhabitants with more than 90 different nations represented.  It boasts over 100 pubs and restaurants and was Norway choice for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Another:

Damn you people!

I got excited because I recognized the grain elevator as a decent clue. I then proceeded to waste an hour searching for a matching google image or an obvious match to the landscape to no avail. And really, who am I kidding? I am a novice in a field of expert window finders. All that being said, I’ll be damned if I spent an hour hopelessly searching only to not make a guess: Sandusky Bay, Ohio?

Another:

I figure the clue here is the window itself – small, rough-hewn and with a bar across it, which made me think of an old fort or something like that. It’s quite high up, so probably on a hill or mountain. After using Google and Wikipedia to search for old forts in Canada and Alaska, I became disheartened by the sheer volume of them. I don’t know how some of these contestants manage it.

For a while I thought it was Sitka, Alaska – coincidentally, the site of Michael Chabon’s alternate-universe Israel in The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. It has the right geographical features but, alas, no forts. After twenty minutes I have given up, and I’m prepared to be astounded by the frightening deduction skills of whoever wins this one.

Another:

OK, I think I’ve now seen photos of every grain elevator on every shore of every Great Lake, but I still couldn’t find the one in this photo!  Clueless city boy that I am, it’s probably not even a grain elevator. Anyway, I’m sticking with the Great Lakes, specifically Superior, so this week’s wild guess is Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.  Of course it could just as easily be Duluth, Minnesota …

Yes it could be:

I got this one, since I lived in Duluth for 23 years.  The body of water in the foreground (frozen) is the Duluth Harbor.  The strip of land is known as “Park Point”.  Beyond the strip of land is the western end of Lake Superior.

A few dozen readers correctly guessed Duluth. One writes:

Access to the neighborhood is via the Duluth Lift Bridge (itself a unique piece of engineering). All residents of Park Point have a ready-made excuse for being late- you just have to say “I got bridged” and everyone knows what it means (that the bridge was up to let boats through, interrupting all traffic across that only connection with the mainland).

Another sends a photo of the lift bridge. Another sends an impressive view of the grain elevator:

Another:

To the right is a park that provides access to the beach where my family has had some very happy times.  Nice white sand and plenty of drift wood to build a fire with.  The water is more invigorating than what you would want to spend much time in, but it’s tolerable in August. The stretch of sand on Minnesota Point, upwards of 6-7 miles long, is the longest freshwater sand beach in the world.  The French explorers who first saw it are reported to have been astonished by all that sand.

Another:

This is going to be easy from basically anybody from Duluth. This view is from the SE side of Enger Tower, in Enger Park. The strip of what appears to be open water in the harbor means the picture was taken in the last few weeks. If you look closely, you can see the R/V Blue Heron in the harbor, the University of Minnesota’s research vessel, from which I do much of my research.

The tower was visited this week by emmisaries from Norway and will be rededicated later this year by his King Harald. Now I know what I’m doing this afternoon; I’ve not visited Enger park since last fall. I’ll let you know which window this is.

Another:

The 5-story, stone Enger Tower was dedicated by Crown Prince Olav of Norway in 1939. Its gradual deterioration mirrors the general decline of Duluth, the leading seaport at the head of the Great Lakes. For Sinclair Lewis, in Babbitt, Duluth had been “the Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas.”

Another:

The picture is not likely to have been taken this year, as Enger Tower is currently undergoing renovation. If it was taken this year, it was taken by part of the construction crew.

Another sends an old postcard from Duluth:

Another writes:

Having skied the UP of Michigan the first time this past winter and the week I spent up there has left me convinced that any VFYW of an icebound shoreline has to be Lake Superior, so I saw this week’s contest and concluded immediately that this is Duluth. I guess I’ve got nothing special to contribute here, apart from an inexplicable desire for my snowy and cold week in the UP to have given me some sort of Great Lakes shoreline spidey sense.  It’d also be fun to prove you can win this contest in under ten minutes without an all-singing, all-dancing multimedia spectacular to prove the answer correct.

Speaking of which:

Wow, I thought this one had us. It’s so grainy and the black interior dominates the image. But we concentrated on two things: ice melting and the silo. Sounds like Great Lakes to us! Off we went scanning the coastlines looking for peninsulas. Finally, after making it all the way to Niagra and around from an Ohio start, Duluth looked just right.

The silo was easy to identify, so the hunt was on for the photo spot. We knew it had to be pretty high, so the line through Enger tower made it obvious. A quick check of the observation windows confirmed it. The photo was taken from Enger Tower, Enger Tower Dr, Duluth, MN, probably from the highest window (not the top deck) facing east.

Enger Tower commands a fine view over Duluth Harbor and St. Louis bay. The hill and 80′ of tower brings the altitude to 531′ above Lake Superior. Enger Tower was dedicated by Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Martha of Norway on June 15, 1939 in honor of Bert Enger, a native of Norway who came to the US and became a successful furniture dealer.

Since you liked the collage I sent last week, I thought I’d include another:

Since that reader also nearly won the contest from Cartagena last week and was the only Duluth guesser to have guessed a difficult window in the past without winning, she receives the prize this week.

See everyone else for the next contest at noon on Saturday!

(Archive)

One final, last-minute submission:

You’ve selected a photo for this week’s contest that befits the name of your new digs; it was a real Beast.  This is my first attempt at a public guess after playing along since the beginning, and even before.  (I was one who also kept the location hidden and tried to guess every day before you started the contest.)

I almost gave up on this week’s photo, and then it hit me.  Although I never saw the inside – only the outside – this had to be a photo taken from the inside of what used to be my future wife’s room.  And she confirmed it with a picture from her scrapbook that her chambermaid took shortly before I made land in my ship and clambered up the side of her father’s lighthouse (most people think it was a castle tower) to elope with her:

I had to cut her hair short and tie it to the bar over the window so we could make it back down. But it grew back.