Category: Contest

A confident reader starts us off:

It is obviously somewhere near the DMZ in Daeseong-Dong.

Another is less sure:

I’ve narrowed it down to either Surabaya, Indonesia or Elmira, New York. Close call, but I’ll go with Surabaya, Johnny.

Another:

Tehran, Iran. I’d say the white buildings and the palm trees are dead giveaways. I will leave the rest of the details for your insane VFYW sleuths to figure out.

Another has Fox-colored glasses:

Benghazi. Because no matter the question, the answer is always Benghazi. (And the contest picture could actually be Benghazi…)

Or farther west?

First time entrant. I spent a year studying in Senegal and this reminds me a lot of Dakar. I’ll guess the picture was taken somewhere around the Medina district.

A family duo looks to the Middle East:

Based on the minaret featured in this week’s picture, my six year old and I are guessing Muscat, Oman.

That was actually this week’s most popular incorrect guess. Another:

The minaret in the background is a close-but-not-exact match to the principal minaret of the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. Several other Omani mosques bear similar designs, so it has to be that country, and probably Muscat. But I just can’t find a closer match! Along the way, though, I’ve learned a lot about Arab architecture, which is always fun. But this sole distinguishing feature is just too tough to match. I’m eager to hear more about those windowless-on-two-sides buildings that abound in this view. They’re definitely unique, but challenging to describe to a search engine.

Another nails the right country:

Hyderabad, India. Specifically, an area you might see on the flyover road from the airport. I could be wrong about this, but the minaret in the right middle ground and radio tower in left background make me a little more certain.

Another studies the scene in more detail:

Urban sprawl punctuated by palm trees, radio towers, and a lone white minaret. The minaret looks round or octagonal, with an onion dome on top, in the architectural style of many Indian/Pakistani mosques. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to narrow it down much further. The most similar minarets I found were in Jaipur, India, so I’m going with that for lack of a better idea.

Another almost has it:

Ten-second guess: this reminds me of the minarets in Northern India (vaguely reminiscent of the ones at the Taj). But this is clearly not the Taj itself, and I’ve got too many errands to run today to search. This looks a little too whitewashed to be Agra or Delhi, the first two places I might have otherwise started looking, so I’m going with the Pink City of Jaipur in Rajasthan. It’s still a big city and has its share of hazy air, perhaps a little less so because it is in the desert. Although the palm trees don’t quite fit with this city, and it troubles me that you would show a View from Bangalore the next day, but this could be an attempt to throw us off the track. To thine instincts be true. This feels like Northern India and so I’m going with that …

On the off chance that I’m close, my best memory of this part of the world is a week in the sacred city of Pushkar, about three hours away, with its masses of Hindu pilgrims, famous camel fair, and great camel trekking in the Thar desert. More monkeys, cows, and camels than cars on the inner city streets near the lake, but no alcohol, meat, or dairy in the food either. Interesting efforts to make pastry without butter.

A former winner gets the correct city and hotel:

Diabolical. Do you know how hard it is to find an image of Agra, India that doesn’t show the Taj Mahal? I knew the minaret at the center of the image was the key. A building in the lower left has a strong Greek influence, so I spent a bit of time around the Mediterranean. But focusing the search on the minaret I found an image of a similar minaret under construction in Agra. Then there came the wading through endless pictures of the Taj Mahal. From up close, from far away, crushing it between two fingers Kids In The Hall style. Everything.

Then, I found the above image. Bingo. Today’s window is from the Gateway Hotel in Agra, looking southwest, thankfully 180 degrees away from a view of the Taj Mahal.

Out of the 23 contestants this week, only a handful correctly guessed Agra and the hotel. For some context, below is a map plotting all of the entries this week (zoom in by double-clicking an area of interest, or drag your cursor up and down the slide):

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Another former winner goes through her methodology:

For me, the only distinctive and potentially unique clue in the photograph was the tall, solitary minaret. Its design and decorative elements suggested the Pakistan-India-Bangladesh region, but when I couldn’t find it through various searches, I looked much more broadly. I soon realized that minarets vary incredibly, even in a single region, and for what is basically a simple architecture form. No two were the same unless part of the same mosque.

Eventually I found a 2004 photograph of a new mosque being built in Agar, India, near the “Park Plaza Hotel”. Its minaret, although still under constructed, was recognizable as that in the contest photograph. From there, I began checking hotel views in the area until finding one very similar to the contest view.

I have little confidence in my exact window guess but believe it is on the eastern side of the hotel’s southern face and on a higher floor. I compared nine photographs taken from various windows or facing the hotel exterior. The aim was to find angles that would include the shed-like building along the perimeter wall and only a limited portion of the eastern lawn and palms. The contest view also looks down on a tall tree growing to the east of the pool-lawn complex. Other features such as walkways and columns in the balcony railing helped narrow the options. It was hard to rectify the angles at which many of these shots were taken.

Thank you for the tour of minarets.

Another:

This one was one of the most difficult I’ve ever seen on the Dish.  The nondescript mosque surrounded by nondescript housing somewhere where there’s both palm trees and non-palm trees.  Very tough.  Anyways, given the smog and the fact there seems to be bathrooms in the bottom right corner of the photo with an “M” and “W” implying an English speaking country, I’m going to guess it’s somewhere in Lagos, Nigeria.  I’m sure Chini will set me straight.

Enter Chini:

Man, if this entry were a B-17 it’d be coming in for a landing more shot up than the Memphis Belle. Allergies this weekend turned me into a red-eyed, sore-throated mess that could barely speak, much less search. By Monday I was basically nowhere, not to mention sleep deprived. But sometimes a change of scenery works wonders; for me that change took place on a train crossing the Delaware. What had eluded me all weekend long suddenly appeared with a few taps on an iPhone, followed shortly thereafter by a rather loud and inappropriate exclamation. (Much to the chagrin of the twenty-something sitting next to me who nearly spilled their beer in response.) So I suppose all roads don’t lead to Rome; this one led me to Agra, India by way of Trenton, New Jersey.

This week’s view was taken from roughly the sixth floor of Agra’s Gateway Hotel. The photo looks west, southwest along a heading of 237.34 degrees. The best part is that the Taj Mahal sits exactly a mile away in the other direction. That and the number of online reviews for the hotel mean that this contest may have quite a few responses from people who’ve stayed there, as was the case with VFYW #151.

Not so, it seems. Teamwork paid off in this case:

Ouch, this one was hard. In our previous entries we had some lucky breaks, or at least we could narrow our search fairly tightly. This time we really had to log some hours on Google. After a day and half of searches and discussion we realized that several continents were still in play.

The obvious clue was the minaret in the background. Traces of that minaret’s style could be seen in many places, but my wife concluded that the closest examples were appearing on the Indian subcontinent. We focused there. I spotted a 2004 photograph of a minaret under construction in Agra that was similar to the one in the contest photograph. Hopping on Google Earth to examine Agra, I located a promising tall hotel (before I was able to find the minaret) and it had a photograph that was almost identical to the contest one …

Seen to the right. No one guessed the exact window, room or floor this week, but our winner – a regular player who has contributed some colorful entries in the past – came pretty close:

I actually forget how I found this, except that it was awesome and I impressed myself. We’re looking southwest from the Gateway Hotel in Agra, India, from a room on the less desirable side that affords no view of the Taj Mahal. We’re on the fourth floor, by my calculations, in the southeasterly wing of the building, and my bet-hedging guess – based on some worldly assumptions about the distribution of the Gateway’s 100 rooms and suites – is that we’re in Room 411. Photo of the window attached.

Nice work. From the photo’s submitter:

My husband was in India, and knowing my obsession with the View From Your Window Contest, he sent along this photo. It was taken in Agra at the Gateway Hotel, Sunday morning, March 23. It’s room 517, to be precise.

If you choose to use this for the contest, I’ll be very impressed with the winners. First off, a Google Image search of Agra, India turns up 99 pictures of the Taj Mahal for every 1 picture of something else. And secondly, there’s no street view on Google Maps. So two of my primary tools for locating these things are essentially useless.

See everyone Saturday for the next contest (which will be easier this time, promise). Meanwhile, a reader responds to last week’s contest, in which we noted that Orlando, Florida was “probably the only US location we’ve ever featured that hasn’t elicited a single contestant’s praise or fond memories”:

Like half the Midwest, my family moved to central Florida in the ’80s, and it was indeed a stark landscape. Its beauty – like much of non-beach Florida – reveals itself very slowly: sinkhole lakes, hanging moss, summer showers you could set your clock by. You need to watch out for gators as you canoe the Wekiva.

It is the South – to everyone except other Southerners, who view us as suspiciously purple. And I know it’s a sickness, but I love Florida’s reputation for weirdness. They say if you shake the United States, all the odd bits settle in Florida.

Not to get all heavy, but I’ve often thought that to live in New York, LA, Chicago or even Boston, is to see yourself, your everyday experience (or at least some version of it), continually reflected back at you in movies, TV, books and magazines. These are stories of love, crime, comedy, tragedy, of the human experience in all of its complexity and contradictions. By living in those places, you know that You exist; your story is worth telling; it is important.

In Orlando, your story will never be told. In fact, Orlando is a town built upon an industry whereby millions of people visit it in order to experience a fantasyland version of every town except Orlando. Millions visit Orlando, but almost none see it. Orlando becomes a mirror for tourists to travel long distances to recreate where they came from, but with all the sharp edges smoothed off. It may be why that Orlando often feels like nowhere, or anywhere. Why the people who move here don’t transfer their allegiance from where they came to here. If they did, their stories would no longer be worth telling or important, they would become invisible, like the people who clean your room while you go to the theme park. No locals go to those places, unless it’s to relieve tourists of their money. We live in an entirely different world from that. And it doesn’t suck.

This will be the only note you get in defense of Orlando. And now that I think about it, I may be OK with that.

But that reader isn’t alone:

I live here in Orlando and wanted to write to defend our much-maligned city. When I read, “Ordinarily I would write something interesting about the city or the structures in the picture, but we’re dealing with Orlando,” I just get annoyed.

What most people think of as “Orlando” is practically its own independent municipality, Tourist Land, many miles from where the vast majority of residents of Real Orlando live. Universal and SeaWorld are out in the tourist corridor near the convention center, 15 miles from downtown – and Disney World is its own jurisdiction! People fly into the airport in Southeast Orlando, drive straight across the southern end of the city to I-Drive or Disney World, Universal Studios or Shingle Creek, all in plowed-over citrus groves or swamp; stay their entire time out there, in an environment built almost exclusively for tourists; and then drive back to the airport when vacation’s over.

When tourists visit New York and stay in Midtown, no one assumes that the lights and tourist traps of Midtown are representative of New York City. But for some reason, people think Orlando is just strip malls of kitschy T-shirt shops and fast-food restaurants.

In Real Orlando, we have historic downtowns and housing districts with significant history that long predates the modern tourist experience. DeLand and Winter Garden are old citrus-growing towns; and Maitland dates to the Second Seminole War. Zora Neale Hurston lived in Eatonville in 1887 and a festival in her honor is still held each year. One of the quaintest little Central Florida towns, Winter Park, dates to the 1850s and has an adorable historic district on Park Avenue that has been a shopping district for locals since the 1920s.

So when I hear people put down poor little Orlando, it’s clear to me that they only know Tourist Land and not the real Orlando!

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

A reader nails it:

I got it! I got it! Finally, I know one.

It’s a golf course.

Another sleuth:

Those fluffy white things in the large, otherwise empty blue expanse in the top half of the photo were a dead giveaway. I literally can see some of those exact same things outside MY window right now, and I’m in Albuquerque. Therefore, this photo was taken from my room at the Midtown Days Inn in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Another moves in the right direction:

Corpus Christi, Texas. That’s a wild punt. If I knew the proper golfing analogy, I’d use that instead.

A hail birdy? You’re asking the wrong blog. Another spots a key clue:

The cars don’t have license plates on the front, so this golf course is probably in Florida.

Another reader elaborates on the Florida-ness:

First-time player, since I’m not nearly the traveler that most Dishheads are. Roads, golf course, neighborhood designs and manmade ponds all scream South Florida – and the powerlines on the horizon clinch it; that’s the Everglades. It’s not Broward County, or I’d recognize it, so I’m going to guess Palm Beach County, specifically, Boca Raton. If I make it past the readon,

I’ll count that as a moral victory.

Another also goes for Boca:

Palm trees, SUVs, cookie-cutter houses, flat terrain as far as the eye can see. This is America at its most boring. Boca Raton it is.

Ouch. That reader probably didn’t spend an hour looking at golf courses then:

I spent an hour looking at golf courses. Naples, Florida. That’s all I got.

A former winner isn’t calling his travel agent:

Meh. Looks like somewhere I’d probably have no fun and complain about the humidity. I am going to go with Idon’tcare, Florida. Or somewhere down south (palm trees) that doesn’t require front license plates (mostly down south, anyway). I think that’s the county seat of Ialreadywon County.

This is probably the only US location we’ve ever featured that hasn’t elicited a single contestant’s praise or fond memories:

Florida.  That’s all I’ve got for you.  A subdivision of one-story houses, a golf course, and lush-looking trees (including palm trees!) on land as flat as a pancake. Whereabouts in Florida? I’ll let the more diligent Dish readers answer that one.

A more diligent reader almost gets the right city:

Kissimmee, Florida? It looks like the view from one of the many hotels in the area that host business conventions and cater to Disney-hungry tourists.

Along those lines, the view’s submitter checks in:

So excited that you used my picture this week. Will a photo from a major tourist city in the continental US be too easy?

Definitely not – only 27 readers participated this week, and only a handful got the right city, including this one:

After living in central Florida for several years, my first thought was Orlando: completely flat land, golf, palm trees, and the one towering building in the distance that looks like the Champions Gate Resort. After spending time on Google Maps, though, I couldn’t narrow it down – there are just too many golf courses in that area of the country.

Seriously:

For a map with less dots, below is this week’s OpenHeatMap of reader guesses (zoom in by double-clicking an area of interest (in Florida), or drag your cursor up and down the slide):

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This reader doesn’t need to guess:

Well! This is the first time I’ve ever been struck with recognition at a VFYW contest – more than just, “Oh, I recognize the city” but “I’ve been in that hotel!”

The landscape is inescapably Orlando – flatness, golf courses, those radio towers – and an Orlando I recognize from my stay at the Ritz-Calrton Orlando, Grande Lakes a couple years ago. After checking out a satellite image, I realized the room is on the other side of the hotel from where I stayed, but it appears to be a room directly above the porte-cochere/entrance, facing northeast:

As for the floor and the room number – you have got to be kidding me. I leave that to people with time on their hands to call the hotel and ask themselves.

Or we can just ask the view’s submitter!

Did I mention how much time I saved this weekend by not competing in the VFYW Contest? That was until you asked me to try to find a picture and identify the window of a hotel room in which I stayed almost a year ago from the outside of the building.

In the pictures, the Ritz-Carlton in the hefty building with the two wings and two cupolas. The JW Marriott is the narrower long building with the single cupola.  There is a low double (Ritz and JW Marriott) conference center in between the two hotels.

My room was on the not yet floor in the Ritz-Carlton in the rear in the wing that was nearer to the JW Marriott.  It faced outward toward the golf course – not inward toward the other Ritz-Carlton wing nor outward toward the conference center/Marriott. If you need a picture with a drawing, I suggest you contact the hotel directly. Nothing personal – I plan to enjoy my free time this weekend.

Another guns for the right window:

Flat, full of golf courses, palm trees, lakes, and tracts of dreary, identical, single-story housing. Can’t be anywhere but Florida. The state only has 1,481 golf courses so it was just a matter of looking at them all in Google Earth. I started working from south to north but luckily my wife looked at the picture and suggested the Orlando area. Only took me about 10 tries before I found the water hazard with the two distinctively shaped sand traps beside the fairway, on the course at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando Grande Lakes Resort.

The view is from a room at the front, not very high up, maybe 3rd floor, so judging by how the row of palm trees lines up I am guessing the marked window:

Other contestants got closer. Here’s a husband and wife team that has played (and guessed correctly) in every contest this month:

Our guess is that the photograph was taken from the Ritz-Carlton Orlando “Grande Lakes” Hotel, located at 4012 Central Florida Parkway, Orlando, Florida. It was taken from a guest room window in the front the of the hotel, several floors over the main entrance/lobby, with the photographer facing northeast. We spent some time working out the angles to determine the correct hotel window, but with so many to choose between, the window selection is at best a semi-educated guess, so we’re crossing our fingers for luck:

The landscape of the contest photograph made us both think immediately of Florida, although neither of us has been there. My wife picked out several buildings in the distance that appeared to be hotels – including one really large one. The concentration of hotels outside of an obvious urban area suggested Orlando, because it brings in tourists for Disney World and various other attractions. My wife tentatively identified the large hotel in the far distance to the left of the contest photograph as the “Florida Hotel & Conference Center” in Orlando, and so we studied large hotels with golf courses in that area. It was my wife that found the Ritz-Carlton.

What first caught her eye was that in the paved parking lot in the contest photograph the parking spots are numbered, and all the cars are parked “backed-in.” (Likely meaning a valet-parking area). She saw an identical parking lot at the Ritz-Carlton, and from there we were able to confirm that everything else matched too.

Great entry. Another:

The photo this week was taken from the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes in Florida (4012 Central Florida Pkwy, Orlando, FL 32837). My guess as to window is in the attached picture. I am guessing the photo was taken from the 8th floor in an even numbered room (It appears the odd numbered rooms fact the pool rather than the front drive?)

I figure every one of these I guess correctly gets me closer to the prize. After a dozen or so contest entries, mostly correct, I got a mention in last week’s contest for my Cook pine strategy and it made my day! I still look forward to this every week, though it can be infuriating at times (there are way too many hotels on golf courses).

Succeeding in difficult contests like this one gives you leg up in future tie-breakers. Meanwhile, it appears Chini got a head start this week:

I suppose it helps to have a little advance training. A few weeks ago, an old college friend sent me a view from a building in Florida, and tracking that one down made this contest a cinch. This week’s view comes from Orlando, Florida and looks almost exactly northeast along a heading of 46.69 degrees. The picture was taken from a room on, oh, let’s say the 7th floor of the Ritz-Carlton Orlando Grande Lakes:

Per the view’s submitter, the room number was 1033. No one even guessed the tenth floor by name, but two readers guessed it correctly via window circling. Since the hotel has 14 floors, the fifth from the top is the correct one. That means Chini nailed it, as did this week’s winner, who is a 20-contest veteran:

The photo is taken from the Ritz-Carlton Orlando Grande Lakes in Orlando. I’m going to guess it’s from the 8th floor – the room is marked here:

This one was an odd one – seemed impossible at first, going from the lack of major landmarks in the photo. But then there were a few quick bits of deduction: It’s a state with palm trees, and no front license plates – Florida. And it’s clearly from a hotel overlooking a golf course. With that to go on, my partner and I started looking at Google Earth views of Florida hotels with golf courses attached and pretty quickly hit on the Ritz-Carlton. The balcony railing matched the balcony railings in traveler photos from the hotel, and then the clincher: Finding the building in the back left of the photo on Google Street View:

Picking the room was the toughest part. I’m guessing it’s above the hotel’s driveway, and between the lines of palm trees (since it’s facing to the left, and only one of the lines is visible in the photo). From rough guesses about positioning, I’m going with the eighth floor, just to the right of the center of the hotel. To guess a room number, maybe 811?

Congrats! And in case you wanted to know the identity of that matching building, the winner of Contest #166 has got you covered:

This week’s contest photo was snapped at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes at 4012 Central Florida Parkway, Orlando, Florida 32837. I’ll guess the window is on the 8th floor on the east side of the building:

Ordinarily I would write something interesting about the city or the structures in the picture, but we’re dealing with Orlando. So I’ll just note that from the Ritz-Carlton, you can see a CubeSmart self-storage facility:

See everyone for the next view on Saturday. No more golf courses, promise.

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

A reader exclaims:

Oh beautiful Málaga!

Another:

San Francisco! Or very close to it. That haze the last few days has been gross.

Another:

San Diego! (or “whale vagina”, in the native German)

Another sees Italy:

Taking a shot here, though more out of sentiment than reason. Red clay tiles and pine trees say Mediterreanean. Satellites look to be pointing northwest. Some older buildings, possibly Austro-Hungarian architecture. Statue of … Garibaldi (?) So, since I lived there for a few lovely months some 20 years ago while researching James Joyce, I’m going to say it’s Trieste, or maybe Maggia, which is just to the south. “Yes I said yes and he loved Trieste yes but he’s got it all wrong yes…”

Another thinks it’s Naples. Or maybe Marseille? Another thinks he spots a flag:

Ok, European-style buildings, warships, oil tankers, a narrow strip of water and (what looks like) the flag of the Russian navy. All signs point to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, Russia. Except I can’t find those buildings! So I guess I’m wrong … Ah well, hopefully I’m at least closer than the wife, who guesses Gibraltar.

Another sides with the wife:

I have spent hours looking at this, and there’s one thing I‘m sure of: this picture was not taken from Gibraltar.  I‘m going with Gibraltar anyway, because I really want that to be the answer.  Gibraltar is awesome.  It has wild apes.  Nowhere else in Europe has wild apes.

I have attached a picture of one of the apes.  Also, I may be going slowly insane staring at this window.

Gibraltar was actually the most popular incorrect guess:

First thought was San Diego – military base, semi-tropical vegetation – but after spending a few minutes looking at maps of San Diego, that doesn’t seem quite right – though it really could be almost any port in southern California.  How about Sevastopol? (It’s certainly in the news – but I’ve never been there and again, the maps don’t seem right).  Gibraltar seems a plausible fit – so I’ll go with that.  The magazine display in the foreground looks like a high-end hotel spread.  So if I had the patience and skill (I actually have some patience, but very little skill), I’d try and find a hotel window looking west over the harbor towards Algeciras.

Another looks east:

My guess is that this picture was taken somewhere along the Bosphorus in Turkey. I took a cruise down the straights a few years ago, and the cargo ships, naval vessels, river hillsides, pine needles, and satellite dishes on those balconies brought me back. Not going to get a more specific guess out of me though – about 5 minutes of searching for “Turkish naval vessles” and “hotels overlooking the Bosphorus” left me discouraged. Who are these people who can search for hours?

Two readers even guessed the Middle East, but this reader gets us on the right continent: “Cartagena, Colombia”. Another, like the majority of our contestants this week, nails the right country and city:

Holy crap – I think I finally got one.

I’m thinking it is in Valparaiso, Chile, and the view is from Pablo Neruda’s home La Sebastiana.

Not Neruda’s home, but close. Another focused on a single detail:

The tree ended up being a very helpful clue for me.  It has the distinctive look of a Cook pine. Wikipedia says that Cook pines are planted abundantly in Australia, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, so I figured that was as good a starting point as any.

The cars are driving on the right, which knocked out a few countries instantly. I started looking around for cities with a naval presence in the remaining countries, and bam! Valparaiso.  The picture is taken from a building overlooking Plaza Sotomayor. Another fun contest!

Another used the tree to figure out the right building:

The large pine tree resembles, at least to me, a Norfolk Island Pine (Araucia–it could be another species), which I associate with the South Pacific region. As the climate appeared temperate in the photograph, I started my search in New Zealand. When that failed, I went to Chile because of its temperate coastlines and grand colonial buildings and monuments, such as those seen from the contest window. Once in Valparaiso, all the clues fell into place. The large pine tree on the hillside was dominant in many of the photographs taken from Plaza Sotomayor and of the Chilean navel headquarters. A search for hotels in the area listed Hotel Casa Higueras. The large pine tree was conspicuous in many photographs of the hotel and promotional photographs posted on travel websites looked very much like that taken from the contest window.

A long-time contestant:

I wonder if any of your other readers had a strange sense of deja vu upon seeing the view for this week’s contest. That pier with the navy destroyers … those gleaming buildings across the bay …

And then it came to me. One summer day in August 2012, I spent the better part of an afternoon studying every nuance of the photo for contest #115, trying to figure out where in the world was this magnificent port city that I had never seen before. That photo obviously left an imprint in my brain, because this week’s view was unmistakeable: Valparaíso, Chile.

Having nailed that down, a scan of Google Maps identified the statue in the foreground as the Monument to Naval Heroes in Plaza Sotomayor. Over to Google Earth, where some careful triangulation with the 3D buildings helped me line up the view just right. When I looked around that spot, I found a geotagged Panoramio photo with the name of a hotel: Casa Higueras.

And now I’m booking my ticket to Valparaíso.

A happy reader adds:

I’m guessing this week’s contest was intended to give those of us who never get it right a chance to feel good about ourselves. Thanks for showing a little mercy.

Sounds like next week might be time for a more merciless view. More than 60 people answered the correct city this week, and most of them got the hotel as well. To add some geographical context to the range of guesses, below is a map from OpenHeatMap, developed by Dishhead Pete Warden, plotting all of the entries this week (zoom in by double-clicking an area of interest, or drag your cursor up and down the slide):

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Several readers took advantage of a useful clue:

Given the diversity and globetrotting nature of your readership, I imagine you’ll get a lot of correct entries for this week’s contest. I didn’t find it by identifying any of the several visible landmarks (the Naval Building, the monument to naval heroes), but by discovering the magazine with the word “MOSSO” on it that’s visible on the table.

Some Googling led me to find out that Ernesto Mosso is sort of the Ralph Lauren of Chile, and may be the most interesting man in the world. He publishes a magazine called MOSSO Life, which apparently goes to a lot of hotels in Chile. It didn’t take much searching to locate the port of Valparaíso and recognize I was in the right place.

A first-time contestant:

I’ve always been a bit intimidated by the level of detail of the winning entries. But this is the second time in the last few weeks I’ve looked at the photo and thought, I’ve been there …

The first was Guam. When I saw that picture my gut told me right away it was Guam, but a cursory search of Google maps didn’t reveal any obvious location, so I figured I was wrong. When I saw the picture this time my mind was screaming Valparaiso, so I wasn’t going to be deterred. A little background: I visited Valparaiso as a merchant marine cadet back in 1991. Of all the ports around the world that I visited during my time in the merchant marine, Valparaiso was one of my favorites.

Anyway, the Navy pier in the background is a dead giveaway. Using Google maps I was able to draw a line from the end of the pier through the tower that is visible in the photo.

The photo looks like it was taken from a hotel on a hillside, and the line passes directly through a building on a hillside. The view from the window was likely from a hotel, since there was a neat arrangement of brochures on the table. Zooming in on the map, I was hoping Google would give me the name of the hotel. Of course, nothing is so easy, clicking on the building gave me nothing. My next hint was a street name, Higuera. So I tried a google search for “Valparaiso hotels Higuera”. Bingo. Casa Higueras.

A Boston native is struck by coincidence:

Of all days to get this view. A year ago I was staying at a quaint hostel in the Cerro Alegre neighborhood of Valparaiso from where this photo was taken when I learned of the tragic Boston Marathon bombings. We had spent that day wandering the streets Cerro Concepcion and Cerro Alegre, Plaza Sotomayor, and venturing the hills to see the home of Pablo Neruda. When we found out, we spent several hours on the phone and on Skype with relatives and friends back home to find out what had happened and to make sure that everyone we knew was okay.

So it’s fitting that a year later and on the eve of the first marathon since the bombing, I get a view of Valparaiso while in my apartment in Somerville. I’ve included one of the photos from my trip.

Another gets nostalgic:

YES – for the first time ever in a VFYW contest did I know within a couple of seconds what city I was looking at: I spent several years growing up, on and off, in Santiago, and the occasional trip to the coast would involve a visit to the harbor city of Valparaiso, and when I was little, a boat ride through the harbor. The pier in the middle of the picture, even over 40 years ago, always had a few navy ships and the occasional submarine docked on in. Harbor tours leave right on the waterfront behind the white tower in the picture.

In a country known for its nature and landscapes (Atacama desert, Andes, Patagonia) but relatively short of interesting architecture and cityscapes, Valparaiso is an exception. It was the leading commercial port on South America’s Pacific role in the late 19th and early 20th century on shipping routes between the Atlantic and the Pacific (via the southern tip of South America). Its importance was much diminished with the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. In 2003 parts of the city were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. For an interesting overview, click here.

Unfortunately, the city earlier this month suffered from devastating fires in the hillsides that killed 15 and destroyed over 2500 homes.

Another used some triangulation to pinpoint the right window:

In the photo, the statue in the square lines up exactly with the inside corner of the far tower, while the spire at left lines up somewhere in the middle of the bluish office building. The intersection of these lines suggest that the photo was taken from somewhere near the western edge of the white building on the map:

It appears that this building would have an address on Calle Higuera. Searching for that street in Valparaiso finds the hotel Casa Higueras. A Trip Advisor photo for Casa Higueras from 2011 titled “la baie vitrée du salon de lecture” shows nearly the exact scene as the contest photo, suggesting that the photo was taking from the hotel’s “reading room”:

The inimitable Chini:

I should have known. Two days after Marquez dies, what chance was there for us not to wind up in the reading room of a South American hotel? (For the Marquez fans, when I heard that he had died I discovered that an old website that I used to go to is still kicking. Definitely worth a visit, especially for the bio.)

This week’s view comes from Valparaiso, Chile. The picture looks northeast along a heading of 40.60 degrees from the Casa Higueras Hotel over the same harbor featured in VFYWC #115.

Although this contest was relatively easy, it also provided my nerdiest moment yet. Upon loading the view, the very first thought that ran through my head was “That looks like a Type 22 Sheffield” – as in, the class of British frigates. And the ship in the center is indeed the Amirante Williams, a former Type 22 that was sold to the Chilean Navy. So that’s my pro tip for the week: get in a time machine, spend your childhood developing a uselessly encyclopedic knowledge of NATO ship profiles, and you too can track down views more quickly.

Another joins Chini in nerdom:

Simple, really.

Another has more details on the ship:

It’s a nice change of pace to be hunting ships instead of buildings. Plus, I learned a whole lot about frigates. The central warship in this week’s view is a Type 22 frigate, originally built for the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy decommissioned its last Type 22 in 2011, but several frigates sold to Brazil, Chile, and Romania remain in service. The architecture and coastline clearly suggested South America, so I took a quick look at the four Type 22s in the Brazilian and Chilean navies. The ship in question is the Almirante Williams, Chile’s only Type 22 frigate. (The Almirante Williams was previously HMS Sheffield (96), named in honor of the Type 42 destroyer of the same name that was sunk during the Falkland Islands War.) After a quick search of Chile’s naval bases, I finally ended up in Valparaiso.

One of the most detailed entries:

Every website I visited for information shows a beautiful and vibrant city. (Though of course Valparaíso is still recovering from the wildfires last weekend that left many dead and thousands homeless.)

The Monument to Heroes of the Battle of Iquique sits at the center of the picture above the table. Although Chile lost this naval skirmish, it won the War of the Pacific against Peru and Bolivia. As a result of securing territory from Peru and Bolivia, the Chilean border moved much further north and Bolivia became landlocked.  Bolivia has been attempting to regain access to the sea ever since, and just last week filed a lawsuit against Chile at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. I used photos of Chilean naval vessels, Wikipedia, and the navy’s own website to identify the ships.

Congrats to the two dozen people who picked the right window this week. If you’re one of them, see if you can spot yours:

One of those belongs to this week’s winner, who had the best overall record without yet winning, having participated in 24 contests over the past few years:

I always love it when a gut feeling pays off in this contest.  When I first looked at the picture, I thought it looked like either Lisbon or Valparaiso, and Valparaiso it is. Nailing down the actual location was a little harder because Google street view isn’t especially accurate or helpful here. Long story short, it’s taken from the bay window in the reading room (thank you TripAdvisor) of the Casa Higueras Hotel at 133 Calle Higuera in the Cerro Alegre area.

I’m too lazy to paste either of them in, and I’m sure you’ll get several other copies of them anyway, but both the hotel website and TripAdvisor have pictures out the same window, and I have to admit it’s a pretty great view.  I did attach a picture from Street View looking back up at the hotel from the plaza with the statue with the window circled.

I was in Valparaiso a couple of years ago and really loved it.  Somehow I’d totally missed the news about the devastating fire there until I was searching for this view.  It sounds like it was uphill from the historic areas, but I was sorry to hear about it.  Valparaiso is not a wealthy city, so it will be a lot to recover from.  The thing I remember most about the city is the graffiti art that you find all over, but especially up in the hills.  I attached a picture of one of my favorites that’s actually only a few blocks from the Casa Higueras.

Great job! And see everyone Saturday for the next contest.

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A reader writes:

I knew immediately upon seeing this image that it was not Seattle … that is all I know.

Another:

Reminds me of Taxco, Mexico – a great town with real Old World atmosphere, in the mountains southwest of Mexico City.

Another gets the right continent:

Eleusina, Greece. Shot in the dark, based on the Mediterranean look and Greek letters in the bottom of the picture, but no sleuthing beyond that.

Another:

Ruling out Modica, Sicily because you’ve already done that for the contest (I sent it in), so going with Scicli – but it could be Ragusa, or almost any town in the Val di Noto region.

Another:

The landscape and architecture in the photo looks Sicilian to me, but I can’t nail down the exact combination of mountains, palm trees and buildings in the photo. I hope Palermo, Italy is close.

Another:

This week I’m going with my first reaction, which was “Antonioni, L’Avventura.” Which means Sicily. It reminds me of the town in that movie, Troina. As for the window, I’m going to guess some window in the churchy complex at the Piazza at the end of Via Conte Ruggero, looking at another part of the churchy complex. Somewhere in here maybe:

Another thought Noto, and another the Piazza Spadaro. Another reader:

Wow, this was a toughie and I’m sure I am not even close, but I’d gather that the building are Italian, as is the church (I recognize St. John, Mark (?)) but there’s no other identification other than the granite hillside. I spent some time looking around various places – Cinque Terra, Piemonte, etc. but to no avail. It’s tax-time crunch and I’m close to finishing mine up but instead took a mental health break instead. Did I get close?

Italy is close, but other readers got closer:

This looks a whole hell of a lot like Montenegro. I can’t pinpoint where it is, but I’ll go with Petrovac, based upon nothing more than a hunch.

Another inches north:

OK, it might not be Budva, Montenegro, but I visited Budva & Cotor in 2001 and the architecture and the dry steep hills of this week’s contest really do remind me of the Dalmatian coast. So since Budva is bigger than Cotor, I’m going with Budva.

Another nails the right country:

Looks like somewhere in the Mediterranean. Our SWAG [scientific wild-ass guess] is Split, Croatia.

Another:

I honeymooned through the islands of Croatia (absolutely beautiful). This looks vaguely familiar. I’m going with the island of Hvar.

Almost. The very first entry we received on Saturday got the right city:

The honey colored tiles give it away: Dubrovnik, Croatia.

More than 80 readers correctly guessed Dubrovnik. To put those in context, here is a map – from OpenHeatMap, developed by Dishhead Pete Warden – plotting all of the entries this week (zoom in by double-clicking an area of interest, or drag your cursor up and down the slide):

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One reader’s quest for a VFYWC victory:

GODDAMN YOU GOOGLE MAPS FOR PICKING TODAY TO DO SOME ASSHOLE UPGRADE!!

It’s a building facing the St. Blasius Church in Dubrovnik, Croatia. If Google Maps wasn’t being SUCH A DICK I’d have an exact address for you. Please stand by.

@($*&^!%%## GOOGLE MAPS!!

9 minutes later:

Ul. od Pustijerne, second floor with the long shutters, facing Dubrovnik Cathedral, Dubrovnik, Croatia. Google hates this place.  That’s as close as I can get.

17 minutes later, the right building:

Based on the reciprocal street view, I think this is the window:

Or maybe the one above it. But I think it’s the one with the blue shutters, based on the photo itself with the edge of blue shutter and the height relative to the building across the street.

Google Maps doesn’t want to give this place an exact street number (thought it best-guesstimates “Ulica od Pustijerne 2,” where there’s apparently a bed-and-breakfasty sort of place called “Bedroom in the Centre of Old Town,” but I don’t think that’s this room. It’s close, but not it. But that’s as close as I can get right now: East-facing window on Ulica od Pustijerne 2, just across the street from Dubrovnik Cathedral.

Oh. And I found it by Googling the ass out of St. Jerome Statues. Because Catholic Saint Fetish. Zing!

Six hours and 46 minutes later, the right address:

Okay, well, I had to actually go outside and breathe some fresh air and not obsess about this any more, but having finally ducked back inside to avoid a calamitous thunderstorm I was able to finally put a name on this place. Old Palace Apartments, Ulica Ilije Sarake 2 20000, Dubrovnik. Here’s a Google Image I’m assuming was taken from the apartment just south of the one the VFYW was taken from. I’m sure I’m way, way too late, but this is the exact spot, huzzah!

Missed the window though. Another had less difficulty:

I just put “european roof statues” in Google and it came up pretty quickly.

A different detail proved important for this reader:

While Dubrovnik is a striking city, what really clued me in was the hills in the background.  Nothing else looks quite like them anywhere else I’ve been, and they tower over the town.

Nearly every contestant who’s been to Dubrovnik made note of how much they enjoyed it, including several who honeymooned there. This one savors a memory:

We went last year, after a stressful season when we needed to flee the country and chill out. Amazing place. I’m 99% sure that this was taken inside the Old City near the gate where we entered every day to wander and stare and eventually end up at Cafe Buza. We would prop up our feet on the rails and drink over priced bottles of beer while staring at the Adriatic. That place baked a lot of the anxiety out of both of us. Sadly I could not find any photos from this angle, but here’s a pic (I think) of the building in the left foreground, from another angle:

Thank you for making me review my pics from the trip! It was never a place on my “to do” list, but I left part of my heart there. The people are lovely, the landscape is amazing. Nerdy points of interest: Game of Thrones is partly shot here, as was some Dr Who (11th Dr).

Many readers noted the Game Of Thrones connection:

Ohh, I know this one: King’s Landing, Westeros, the new top destination for weddings! Or maybe just the location that stands for it in filming. The distinctive statues on top the Cathedral, marked in the contest picture as well as in the Dubrovnik panorama attached, give it away.

I do not have the patience to look for the exact window, so I will doubtlessly lose to the hundreds of other Game of Thrones fans who take the trouble to identify it.

Here’s Dubrovnik in its Thrones CGI disguise:

The city has seen real conflict as well:

I have never been Croatia but my parents were there many years ago, just after the war and things had settled down. They have many photos of bombed-out hotels along the waterfront. Thankfully both sides involved in the war were smart enough to spare Dubrovnik. My parents proclaimed it the most beautiful place they had ever visited. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to visit some day myself. Thanks for another great contest.

Another reader, like many this week, nails the right window:

It took me six hours to get this, using old-fashioned cyber elbow grease and shoe leather, and it is only now, as I primp my entry for the judges’ eyes, that I notice the “Konoba Amoret” written on those umbrellas. This means that you’ll again be deluged by typo-ridden winning entries from casual viffywers, and that the most I can reasonably expect to gain from my efforts is to see another bean slide across on The Great Abacus Of Whose Turn It Is To Win.

The Great Doug Chini chimes in:

This 200th view may not be the hardest, but it sure is a pretty one. Based on the Mediterranean architecture and tight field of view I thought that it might produce only a handful of winning entries. But when I found the location I realized that, as with VFYW #170, the town’s fame means that there will be a ton of readers who got there far faster than I did. Serves me right, I suppose, for never hopping across the Adriatic when I lived in Italy.

This week’s view was shot inside the walls of the old city of Dubrovnik, Croatia. More precisely, it was shot from inside a room on the top floor of the Old Palace Apartments adjacent to the Cathedral of the Assumption and looks east, northeast along a heading of 58.60 degrees.

Many first-time contestants guessed the same window, including:

I did it! IdiditIdiditIdidit!

Another first-timer:

I am 100% sure this is from the old city of Dubrovnik, Croatia. The jewel of the Adriatic. My wife and I spent some of our honeymoon to this lovely city, and even named our son after it’s patron saint (Saint Blaise, patron saint of throat maladies and wild animals). Here’s a VFYW from our honeymoon:

The view is looking east, with the Cathedral on the left. I don’t know the name of the building, or what it’s purpose is. I assume it is a sobe, which is a room in a private residence rented out to tourists (this is a far better experience than hotels). My wife and I ate octopus salad under the tents in the square at the bottom center of your picture.

I’m pretty excited.  This is the first time I have even guessed the correct area of the world, let alone gotten close.  And this is the first time sending anything to you.  I have been a reader and subscriber for a couple of months now. Thank you for bringing back some lovely memories.

That reader, along with the many readers represented in this composite image, got the right window:

But how to determine the winner? One contestant stood out this week: a veteran of 17 contests who has correctly guessed multiple times, including some difficult views, without yet winning:

This week’s contest is brought to you by Dubrovnik Croatia. Starting with the satellite dish, we narrowed it down by the Mediterranean setting and the church and eventually ended up with Dubrovnik.  From there a quick Google Map search led to the Dubrovnik Cathedral and the correct building:

Thanks for sticking with the contest and congrats! From the photo’s owner, for the record:

Wow that’s so cool, what an honor to be chosen for the contest! I’m a long-time Dishhead, quit my job and moved to Europe last spring. Croatia is beautiful, Dubrovnik especially so. This is from the window of the apartment we were living in at the time in old town Dubrovnik behind the old cathedral. The address is: Ilije Sarake 2, 20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was taken on Sunday, September 1st at 12:27 pm.

The apartment is on the second (top) floor of the building, just behind the Old Cathedral which is a big landmark in Dubrovnik. The window faces out toward the East, and the direction of the photo is pointing sort of North East, toward the harbor (which you can’t see in my photo since there’s a building in the way), with the hills in the background. Here’s a marked up screen shot of the Google Maps satellite view:

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A reader thinks this week’s photo was taken “somewhere wondrous”:

I haven’t been doing well with hemispheres but I’ll guess Northern. This certainly takes the prize for the best roofs in a VFYW. That flying carpet one in front of the green bottle building with the four white spears in the right background will be a wonderful clue.

Another imagines a happy giant:

This has to be Zoeterwoude, Netherlands. Where else would there be a 10-story tall Heineken bottle?

Near the Alps?

Torino, Italy. I’ve gone up in the green tower while studying abroad years ago. I think so, at least.

Another goes south to Buenos Aires. Another gets on the right continent:

I look at your view every week.  For this one, about 10% of the view is black – just the window frame. A palm tree, some traffic cones, then there is what appears to be a rolling rock beer bottle in the middle of town. My guess: Singapore.

Another goes with Kuala Lumpur and another gets closer with Hanoi. Closer still:

Off to coach a Little League game, but I’m guessing Phnom Penh, because that compound in the foreground looks a like the Royal Palace, and those two towers in the background could maybe be the Gold 42 tower? I don’t know. Go Nationals!

Another gets the right country:

I don’t have the time in my life to do the research that would generate a win, but it’s still fun to play. This is clearly Thailand – the architecture gives it away for anyone who has ever visited, and the yellow royal flags confirm. Where in Thailand is a different story. Not metropolitan enough to be Bangkok, so I just went with one of the other large cities: Chiangmai. Looking forward to seeing how the winner narrows it down to the exact window.

The exact city:

Bangkok!!!

Another got a little lost:

Wow, these are harder than they look. The roof looks like nearly every Buddhist temple Google images can turn up in Bangkok, and there’s a yellow flag in the distance that could be the old Thai royal flag. The twin buildings in the background also looks like two that are visible near the Rama IX bridge in Bangkok. I’m going to guess the Wat Phra Kaew temple in Bangkok, but I wish I could find that green building.

Another recognizes a different temple:

I don’t really have time to work on the contest this week, but that sure looks like Wat Po in Bangkok. One of the best trips I ever took was a solo journey to Southeast Asia to visit friends (and friends of friends who randomly left me keys to their apartments!). It was right after 9/11 and I saw some of the most beautiful places on Earth traveling through Burma, Thailand and around Hong Kong. One of my favorite scenes was a photo I snapped at Wat Po (I’ve borrowed this image from some kind soul who posted it on the interwebs):

Would you like to see the Reclining Buddha … or massage the toilet?

Another tried in vain to find the building the photo was taken from:

Southern Hemisphere, Asian architecture, so somewhere in Southeast Asia. I focused on the temple with the unusual roof and windows. I lucked out and learned they are Thai windows, then came upon the temple compound, Wat Ratchanadda in Bangkok. I found photos with a similar orientation taken from the Golden Mount across the way, but there’s no hotel. Crap; I got the location but can’t find the freaking hotel? Aren’t all of the contest photos taken from a hotel? I think so, but I’m starting to tire, so I’ll just guess it was taken from the Golden Mount.

By the way, you learn a lot playing this game. I mostly learned that Bangkok needs to be added to my list of travel destinations.

You also learn that it’s not always a hotel; this week’s view is from the Golden Mount – or more precisely:

From the northwest corner of the Golden Mount along the walkway at the Wat Saket Ratcha Wora Maha Wihan, usually shortened to Wat Saket, a Buddhist temple in Pom Prap Sattru Phai district, Bangkok, Thailand.  The photo is looking west northwest toward Wat Ratchanadda.

Chas, aka Special Teams, put together this photo composite of about 20 entries – see yours?

Another reader is bemused:

So last week my gut said Western Samoa, them I saw that the clue said United States. I had a brief look at Hawaii, then American Samoa, but then family and work called and I didn’t make it as far west as Guam. I was busy at work getting things wrapped up to go on holiday.

This morning, on holiday in Koh Samui, Thailand, my wife said: we can get this week’s contest; it’s got to be Bangkok! I’d forgotten to even check (too much swimming with our 2.5 year old!) If only you’d posted this next Sunday we could have wandered down and narrowed down the view in person.

And yes, it is Bangkok. I’m on holiday and on an iPhone so no fancy pictures and diagrams. The view is of Wat Ratchanatdaram and the Loha Prasat, taken from Wat Saket – also known as the Golden Mount. I’m assuming lots of people will get this one – but in not sure how to narrow down the window. It’s taken from the base of the stupa, and appears to be the southwestern most corner. Like I said: in one week we could have gone to the wat and replicated the picture … now, back to the holiday!

A “long-time peeper, first-time player” gives it a go:

From the southern-most window (of five) facing Boripat Rd of the temple at Wat Saket วัดสระเกศ ราชวรมหาวิหาร (ภูเขาทอง) in Bangkok. It is a view of Wat Ratcha Natdaram. It appears there is some restoration going on. The only reason I know this was my wife and I were planning a trip in February to Bangkok and ended up needing to cancel our trip after the recent unrest. Ugh. Wish I was viewing this myself instead of playing a game.

Another reader, like the many who determined this week’s view, is feeling mighty victorious:

Finally! I am 99.9999% sure that I have this one. This picture was taken from the Golden Mount at the Wat Saket in Bangkok, Thailand. The window is from the North West corner (facing west). The picture yelled Chaing Mai, but after searching Chaing Mai and coming up empty, I googled Bangkok + Wat and found this place. After three more hours of trying to pinpoint the exact angle, a brilliant idea came to me; I searched YouTube. This video at the 2:57 mark shows the angle of the picture but from a slightly different window:

I bet many of your readers answered this correctly, but how many used YouTube to pick the window? This is first time I have participated in this game, and I can’t wait to do it again.

A frequent visitor to Bangkok sheds some light on the temple:

In the years of guessing in this contest, finally someplace I have more than a passing knowledge of. My husband is Thai and I have been to Bangkok over 20 times. It is my second home. The photo appears to be taken from Wat Saket, a Buddhist temple. The stupa on top of the temple is well known in Bangkok. The Golden Mount was once the tallest building in Bangkok. The location of Wat Saket was a crematorium where the bodies of the dead, who were killed by cholera, were disposed of in the early 19th century during the reign of Phra Buddha Lertla Napalai – King Rama II. The temple has windows near the top of the base of the stupa where this photo was apparently taken.

A visual entry:

Another offers an architectural lesson:

The countries of east Asia all have a unique style for the big temples. Here are some of my pictures for different nations. Thailand’s have a red, yellow, or green roof accented by another color and those golden pointy things. Korean temples are mostly red, with green and blue floral patterns painted all over the place. Japanese temples are muted affairs. Browns and whites and such.

The second clue was the window, specifically the lack of a window pane. Thanks to a confluence of economics and the city’s completely flat topography, any vantage point that high must be in an expensive building whose fancy-shmants owners want window panes – the one exception being Wat Saket, a temple built on an artificial mountain.

Down below you can see a fish-ball soup restaurant and a bunch of shops that cater to wooden door enthusiasts. Up top is a ton of smog. In the end, it seems my unpaid internship in Bangkok could actually have some recompense!

A former resident feels a pang of regret:

I don’t think I ever visited the Golden Mount while I was living there and now wish I had! Whenever you’re somewhere long-term, you neglect to do all the tourist things …

Nostalgia also moved this reader:

I was amazed to see this picture pop up on the feed tonight. I used to pass this Wat (temple) on the bus going to work every day in the early ’90s. My wife was born nearby. Now we both live in the Brooklyn-like wilds of Adams Morgan (and love it), but still occasionally miss Krung Thep Mahanakorn, the Great City of Angels.

An angel’s-eye view:

I suspect you’ll have a 100+ who know this is Bangkok, but I think many fewer will nail the location – which is the opposite direction from the classic view that looks down to Wat Saket (toward the east). In any case, your View is to the west – with the Democracy Monument being the main clue (but City Hall is also visible). I was only really sure I had it when I found the Google street view showing some matching windows.  I remember getting the kids some ice cream along this street after the visit to the Mount – it was stinkin’ hot, as always in Bangkok.

Attached is a photo of my four-year-old son making a donation inside the Golden Mount. the Buddhas inside were not particularly memorable, but he definitely remembers the tiger and ringing bells along the stairs on the long walk up.

Best way to get to the area is via the water taxis that ply the nearby narrow Saen Saep Khlong (canal) – occasionally reaching James Bond-like speeds (make sure to keep up the vinyl curtain to keep from having water hit you on the backsplash off the walls).  We try to travel by water as much as we can in Bangkok, since you can get to a surprising number of places, and it always beats a taxi on the clogged roads.

Another reader is taken back:

Wow, wow, wow. Never has a View From Your Window brought back so many memories! I feel like every week some reader has a story about the time they de-wormed orphans while staying in that same hotel or attended a UN summit at the chateau in the distance. But never me. Well, until now.

Although it looks like it, that “skyline” looming in the background isn’t a financial district. It’s Siriraj hospital and it was my neighbor for six glorious months in 2005 when I was an exchange student at Thammasat University (which is directly across the river from the hospital). In fact, that large blue-roofed wat-looking structure in front of the skyline isn’t a wat at all; it’s Thammasat University’s huge auditorium complex.

This photo actually has lots of wonderful Easter Eggs. I’m sure I won’t be the only reader to point out the four fins jutting up in the middle – that’s The Democracy Monument and it’s been the site of more than a few (sometimes violent) protests over the years. That spot of greenery in front of the Thammasat auditorium is Sanaam Luang, which is sort of like Thailand’s National Mall. And just barely cropped out of the left side is the Grand Palace.

I spent eight months studying abroad in Thailand in 2005 (mostly in Bangkok, but also doing research in the northeast in Ubon Ratchathani). I’d only been back once since, but this last summer I had the good fortune to bring my boyfriend with me on his first backpacking trip (through Europe, the Mid-East and Southeast Asia). He’s never been a big traveler or had much interest in it, so it was a coup to get him to come. When I saw this photo I immediately forwarded it to him, exclaiming “Does this look familiar?!? We’ve been there!!!” He said it was either Thailand or Europe. Looks like we’ll need to do more traveling.

Another correct guesser:

Never been to Thailand, but my dad (with whom playing VFYW is our weekly bonding time) quickly pegged it as an indeterminate location in Bangkok. I was able to narrow it down from there. If I win, it will be a shared victory.

By the way, how do you keep track of prior guesses? If I guess the correct building but not the correct window, does that count as a correct guess?

Yes it does, if the contest that week is a difficult one – “difficult” defined by only 10 or fewer readers correctly guessing the location. (This week’s contest, in contrast, had closer to 100.) We keep track of such Correct Guessers and then cross-reference future potential winners against our email database. Back to Bangkok:

VFYW virgin here. I wish I had a better story, but I basically did some googling for those red/green roofs, which took me to some very similar looking wats in Bangkok. From there, it was a trial and error approach to Street View (headache accomplished!)  My first thought was that the actual wat was just out of frame, or maybe under the green tarp. But then there was a Keanu-like “whoa” moment where I realized the photo could have been taken from the wat.

Heh. Okay, so which Wat window is it already? From the submitter:

Wow, thanks for picking my photo. I have only taken part in the contest a few times but am pretty stoked on having a picture selected. The photo was taken from the west-facing window of the top floor (not the roof) of Wat Saket (Golden Mount) in Bangkok, Thailand. The building in the immediate distance is the Royal Pavilion Mahajetsadabadin. Unfortunately I can’t be more specific than that. I believe there are five windows on each side but I can’t say which one I took the photo from. Next time I will record more detail …

Don’t worry, Chini’s got your back:

I guess we had to go back a few months to the holidays to find a less challenging view than this week. But as far as the easy ones go, this one was was fun, mainly because finding the right window took a little bit of work. This week’s view comes from Bangkok, Thailand. The view looks west, northwest along a heading of 293.12 degrees from a window at the top of the Wat Saket temple.

Of the several contestants who guessed the same window as Chini, one stood out with 13 previous entries, including many correct guesses with no wins – until today:

Great contest this week! I looked at the picture on Saturday and immediately thought that it was going to be impossible, but then I noticed the temple in the background. In fact, it’s a whole temple complex. I thought perhaps Vietnam (Hanoi, maybe?) or China, but doing a google search on “buddhist temple” brought up hundreds of similar structures, mainly in Thailand. So I just added “Bangkok” to the search and after poking around Panaramio for a while, I became convinced that the temple was actually Wat Rachanatda School. A little more looking on Panaramio, and bingo! I found this picture. That’s taken from what appears to be the identical position, just with a little more zoom, and another, for good measure.

It seemed pretty obvious that this photo spot is popular, so I guessed that it was taken from a tourist destination. Drawing a line from the top of the tower covered in green scaffolding over the temple roof points directly to Wat Saket, and specifically, to the “Golden Mount” in its center, which Wikipedia calls a “popular Bangkok tourist attraction and … one of the symbols of the city.” Here’s another view, this time from the Golden Mount, looking over from the north side of the building. The window in the contest is on the west side.

The Wiki page shows a square building with five windows on each side, so at this point I have to guess: numbering the windows from #1 to #5, north to south, I guess that the picture was taken from window #3 (the middle window) from the Golden Mount, facing northwest towards the temple at Wat Rachanatda.

Congrats on the hard-fought victory! See everyone on Saturday for the next view – our 200th, in fact.

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