Category: Contest

A reader thinks he recognizes an important landmark in this week’s photo:

It’s the Oh Shit Bridge!

Rather, the bridge in the far background, mostly hidden behind the similar-looking one, is the Naval Academy Bridge across the Severn that crosses from the Naval Academy and the town of Annapolis towards the Bay Bridge and the Eastern Shore. When you’re coming back from leave, the Academy comes into full view when you start crossing the bridge, hence its name among midshipmen, as in, “Oh shit, I’m almost back at the Naval Academy!” This photo has been taken further up the Severn, looking out towards the Chesapeake.

Another:

Bridge geek here. Older steel bascule bridge on the far left, AASHTO-type girders front and center on both the harbor bridge and the channel elevated bridge. Other than that I have no idea, so I am going to guess Pensacola, FL, since I am about 80% sure of this: it’s the South, we are looking west, and it’s not the Keys.

Another reader:

This sure looks like it could be the bridge from San Diego to Coronado. I’ve only been there once, actually a year ago this week, to stroll about the famous Hotel del Coronado with a dear friend, a woman I hadn’t seen in 52 years. It was great.

Another heads inland:

This is my first time submitting. This looks to be the boat dock in Decatur, Alabama located on the Tennessee River.  The bridge appears to be one I have crossed many times on my way to Interstate 65 via Decatur.

Or is it way up north?

The boats are parked at the Canarsie Pier in Brooklyn, NY, with the Belt Parkway in the background. If not, it sure looks a lot like it.

Another heads down Interstate 95 for a look at the boating scene:

The long, low bridge and types of boats shown here take my thoughts to southern Florida, perhaps south of Miami, or somewhere in the Keys. Sailboats, which can be demanding to operate even in the lightest weather conditions, are heavily outnumbered here by motor yachts. Those vessels bespeak an older population of owners: cautious, conservative, and comfortable, who may never even leave the harbor, but who enjoy the ambience of the marina and, from time to time, perhaps invite the boat owner on the other side of the dock to come have a tall one and shoot the breeze for a while. The chairs up on the main dock are very inviting.

Another:

This picture just reeks of the Southeastern US, but I can’t find any set of bridges that matches the configuration seen in the photo. Biloxi has plenty of casino hotel rooms to provide views of this sort, so that is my guess. I can’t wait to see what people came up with for tracking down boat registries.

Or sales listings, which we’ll get to. This reader gets the right state:

Looks like Morehead City, North Carolina, and in particular, a view from the waterfront Marriot.  Spent a weekend there last summer and traveled back in time – just a quaint, historic little piece of North Carolina.

Another reader, like the majority of our contestants this week, identifies the correct town and hotel:

This one came fairly quickly to me, as it definitely looked like a coastal area in the Carolinas.  I ruled out any areas in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina due to a lack of palmetto trees or marsh, so North Carolina came to mind.  The bridges help it determine that it’s New Bern, as there are several crossings of the Trent and Neuse Rivers, which meet at the point where historic New Bern was founded.  A beautiful and historic town!

The view is one towards the southeast and appears to be from the fourth floor of the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel that was built in bicentennial park, overlooking a second story pool and the docks, which are angled acutely to the shore.

This is my first time entering into the event!

A local is also ecstatic:

Oh. My. God.  I cannot begin to tell you how excited I was to see this week’s VFYW.  It’s right in my home town of New Bern! I’m so giddy I can barely type this email.  I’ve never gotten closer than the country of a contest in the past, so imagine my surprise when I scrolled down your site and thought – holy shit, that’s where I live!  Somehow, I’ll find a way to lose this contest, I just know it.  Just know that someone in New Bern, North Carolina loves Andrew Sullivan (& Co.) and is a founding (and renewing) member and is more excited than he should be that he knows this week’s answer.

Well, now for some details.  This shot is out of the rear window of the main building of the Doubletree Inn, formerly the Hilton, formerly the Sheraton, overlooking the now privately-owned Marina.  Next door are some recently completed condos, making the hotel complex effectively three separate buildings.  Not bad for a town of about 30,000.  In the back, you can see the recently renovated cantilever bridge that caused a lot of controversy down here when it was built (long story).  The deck at the bottom left hosts live music events in the summer.

New Bern itself is the colonial capital of North Carolina, the sister city of Bern, Switzerland, and celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2010.  Out mascot is the bear. Go ahead and Google our former mayor Lee Bettis if you want some good laughs. The Marina sits at the confluence of the Trent and Neuse Rivers and today it is absolutely gorgeous here.  Ah, New Bern.  I can’t believe it!  I am nearly certain someone who doesn’t live here will also know the answer, will send you pictures of the window from which the picture was taken, complete with graphs and charts.  But I bet nobody else will tell you that they’ve had drinks at the table with the blue and white umbrella (I have), or that the last deck party at the hotel that they attended was two weeks before the birth of their first child (my wife got some disapproving looks that night).  So if I lose because someone gets more specific about the picture, so be it.  I’ll have a story to tell my kids.

By the way, New Bern got a shout-out in last night’s “Better Know A Disctrict”; evidently the town was featured in The Notebook. Another reader:

At first glance, I thought of Tampa Bay, but then switched to New Bern, NC. For such a tiny town, New Bern has an impressive array of bridges. The airport is small – the person who checks you in runs round the back and loads your bags, then checks your boarding pass at the gate. It’s also near the awesomely (and aptly) named Dismal Swamp. If it’s New Bern, the pic would probably have to be from the Bridge Point hotel, as I can’t think of another one directly on the water. That’s the extent of the research/trolling through my memory I’m willing to do given that it’s probably actually somewhere in China, and someone else will have hacked a NASA satellite to take a picture of the person currently occupying the correct room shaving in the bathroom mirror.

It was the structure at the base of the closest bridge that did it for me; it looks familiar:

Many readers focused on the boats for clues:

My immediate gut reaction was Coronado, CA, but a quick check of Google Maps and Street View indicated that the bridge was wrong. My next thought was somewhere along the Florida keys; but it only took about 5 minutes of scrolling along US 1 in Google Earth to recall that the majority of the bridges in the keys were flat and not arched. I figured I best step back and really take in the clues.

My first thought was to check boat registrations on the two names that are easily visible – Carpe Diem and High Five, but there are just too many possibilities and it didn’t look like I could easily sort it out that way. The next step was to search on Neptune. That one boat in the foreground has several banners on it and then the Carpe Diem named boat next to it has one so it looked like it was a tour boat service of some sort.

I messed around with a couple of Google searches using Neptune boat tours and kept coming up with wine tours in San Fran. When I was searching for boat registrations for High Five, I noticed a bunch in the Virginia area and that got me thinking about the Chesapeake Bay. When I searched on “neptune boat chesapeake” I immediately go a hit on that logo and noticed the Trident shaped E matched the one in the photo – Bingo!

From there it was a quick search of the Neptune Yacht sales website to see that they’re in New Bern, NC. Just typing in New Bern, NC into Google Earth and you can immediately see the arched/curved bridge and the perpendicular one. X marks the target zone (and the marina):

Zooming in on the marina you can pretty quickly spot the pool and fence that shows up in the photo. X marks the fence and pool chairs that belong to the Double Tree/Hilton. The room clearly looks out over the pool, facing South East – the camera view is just slightly beyond the pool. The circle is the room, the line is the view, the X are the pool chairs. In the frame of the photo, you are just to the right of the fence line that returns towards the hotel so I think it’s that 5th window from the end. The question is which floor…

The view is relatively high up, but there are no signs of the balcony, which is only on the top/5th floor. My bet is therefore the window on the 4th floor, circled below:

Another has more on the boat:

Using the marina and landmarks in the distance, I’m guessing that the picture was taken from the seventh room from southwest corner of the south tower. According to a reviewer in Trip Advisor, the fifth floor is the only floor with walkout balconies, so this along with the angle leads me to believe the room was on the third floor.

As an aside for the nautically interested, the sailboat “Carpe Diem” in the middle of the marina, is a well maintained 1995 Beneteau Oceanis 400 for sale and recently reduced to $98,900:

If anyone’s interested in buying the boat, several admiring readers passed along the link. Another:

I know people usually name the room number, but I have NO idea how they do that. So … let’s go with room 302, which might instead be numbered 319, 332, or 339, depending on how rooms are numbered on the floor plan. Or maybe 303/318/333/338???

You’ve won my dad’s interest in this contest. So we’ll be doing these together now, and since he did the legwork on the city, he’ll get the book if we win this time.

You two were close! Many readers guessed correctly this week, but nobody picked the right room number, not even Chini. Here is a composite of many of the (incorrect) window choices this week:

Of the few people who guessed the correct window, the following reader had the most previous correct guesses without a win, so he gets the prize this week:

First thing that popped into my head this week was “Tampa Bay.” A quick map check showed that was not right, but it seemed something along the intra-coastal waterway or maybe up the east coast of the US. Once I figured out the configuration of the bridges – with three distinct spans at the right side of the picture – I spent some time panning around maps looking for them. No luck.

Next I decided to search on the names I could see on the boats. Do you know how many different boat-related enterprises use the word “Neptune”? Do you know how many people name their boats “Carpe Diem”? Finally I stumbled across the logo of Neptune Yacht Sales and Service of New Bern, NC, which looked like a match.

And there it was, the New Bern DoubleTree, overlooking the marina and the bridges. I found a picture from 2005 with a similar scene; there is a drawbridge span that has clearly been replaced since then. Going to Street View and looking back from the structure at the north end of the bridge – probably a drawbridge control room – gave me a line to the room. Street View also had a picture taken at the back of the hotel which shows the same two Neptune boats and the back of the hotel. Looking at the angle I guessed it was the third floor, and based on the overhead I figured fourth window over from the right.

I got last week’s hotel right but miscounted the floors, missing the correct window by one. Hoping I am a little more accurate this time.

Accurate enough for a big win. From the original submitter:

This picture was taken on February 17, 2014, from the window of my hotel room (#307) at the Hilton Doubletree Hotel in New Bern, North Carolina. I believe it was the 4th window from the center of the hotel (the hinge or bend), on the 3rd floor, behind the top of the tree on the left. A sleuth can discern that the scene is in New Bern by the several banners advertising Neptune Yacht Sales, a business located in New Bern.

(Archive)

by Chas Danner & Chris Bodenner

A reader gets wistful:

Savannah, Georgia. The state that broke my heart. Twice.

Another goes way west:

This is Guilin, China.

Another wild guess:

If I’m correct, this picture is taken right off the Bosphorus River, in Istanbul. I think the bridge is the Ataturk Bridge. Hope I’m right! This is my first ever try for a VFYW, so does that cut me some slack?

A little but not enough. A reader gets the right continent:

The license plates look European, and the flag on the front of the boat looks blue.  I’m going with northern Greece, somewhere near Albania.

Another thinks he’s got the right river:

I spent a summer studying abroad in the Czech Republic. Made a trip to Linz one weekend to see what was there. Linz’s waterfront looks very similar to that picture and so does the bridge. Also the cruise boat makes me think its somewhere on the Danube.

A few others thought it was the Danube as well. But another gets closer:

Like many other readers, I suspect, I have been meaning to subscribe, but I’ve not yet gotten around to it. As far as the VFYW, this is the first time I’ve ever had a real glimmer of recognition. The bridge and gently-sloping hills in the background strike me as Rouen, one of my favorite towns in France.

Another gets the right country:

This bridge looks very much like one that I crossed on foot with a suitcase about 20 years ago, when I was a graduate student studying in Germany for a year.  I remember taking a ferry down the Rhine from Mainz to Koblenz, walking across the bridge to a fleabag hotel I where I spent the night (the guidebook I used them called the decor “cheesy” and the facilities “a little worn”). The wintry scene, the German-style apartment houses in the background, the European economy cars and the bicyclist all make me think of Koblenz.

Another gets really close:

This appears to be in Cologne. The view seems to be looking from the left side of the Rhine over to Deutz (a neighborhood in Cologne) on the right side. If it’s not Cologne, it must be somewhere along the Rhine.

It is. Another gets the right city:

I think your contest photo is a picture of Bonn, Germany. That’s the bridge running over the Rhine, if I’m not terribly mistaken. Two summers ago I walked over that bridge every morning to my German classes. Terrible classes, but my wife and I had a lovely time in the city all the same.

Another nails the right hotel in Bonn:

I’m a loyal reader but fairly new subscriber, and this is the first contest I’ve ever entered. If I get this right, then a million other people probably will, too, given my very rudimentary search technique skills. Right off the bat, this looked like Germany to me, and the Rhine River, and for some reason I immediately thought “Bonn”, a city I’ve been to a few times. Then a couple of image searches and some basic Google mapping and lo and behold … Hilton Hotel, looking out over the Kennedy Bridge. I’m too lazy to even try to figure out exactly which room the photo was taken from, which means someone else will probably take the prize. Please tell me I’m right, as I’m already shaking with excitement …

Yep you’re right. But more than 50 readers correctly guessed the Hilton Hotel. Here’s a fantastically thorough entry:

This week, I first traveled the Danube and the Elbe before navigating down the Moselle to join the Rhine at Koblenz, where Kaiser Wilhelm I and his genius loci survey the rivers’ confluence at the German Corner.  From there, it was a short ride to the Poseidon Yacht anchored in front of the Hilton Hotel at Berliner Freiheit 2 D-53111 in Bonn, Germany, where this week’s contest window is located. Beautiful scenery the whole way.  I’ll guess room number 410, on what we in America accurately call the fifth floor.  I compared this photo – that seems to have been taken from the same room – with a photo looking out of room 326 to help estimate the room number.  Even if it’s not room 410, [above] are two pictures with the window circled. [Below] is an overview photo with labels for the hotel, the Poseidon Yacht, the Kennedy Bridge, and the church tower that is through the trees and across the Rhine from the contest window:

The Poseidon Yacht looks better in all its neon glory at night. But the city’s most famous landmark is not in the picture; Bonn hosts the corporate headquarters of Haribo, the company that gave the world gummy bears.

Perfect timing for a German riverboat trip, as I have been reading Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts. Fermor walked across Europe before the war, starting a few months after the Nazis took power. He made his way up the Rhine by barge in December 1933 just before Christmas, with stops in Bonn and Koblenz. The war and the Holocaust are still in the distance, but they hang over the memoir.  It’s a wonderfully written adventure with digressions into history, art, language, and religion.  I recommend it to other Dish readers.

Another geeks out on the bridge:

Finally got one! Kennedy Bridge, near where the Allies reached the Rhine in 1945. I couldn’t read the sign on the boat, but I had some sort of advantage – bridges! This one is strange for the US – the piers are wrong, and the Coast Guard HATES having fixed steel bridges that low over navigable waterways. Plus, the buildings looked vaguely European/Scandinavian. After finding a web database of bridges, and sorting to “multiple girder steel bridge over water” and finding a picture of a bridge in Strasbourg with similar features, then realizing we just passed the date of the allied advance, I traveled down the Rhine in Google Earth until I found it. I got thrown off the trail a bit because the photo clearly shows six girders, but the Streetview/Earth photos show it before its recent renovations with expansion to six girders. Here’s the hotel the photo was taken from:

The lamp post (blue) is kind of to the left of the photographer, but they are close to it. I am going to guess: 3rd floor, middle of north wing (red circle). Here’s the Streetview of the bridge, same direction as shot:

A nearby resident shares more info on the bridge:

The Kennedy Bridge had been renamed in December 1963 in honor of President John F. Kennedy, who had visited both Bonn (Germany’s capital at the time) and Berlin half a year earlier in June 1963 to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift and give his famous “Ish bin ein Bearleener” speech. The name of the street leading up to the bridge, Berliner Freiheit, translates to “Freedom of Berlin”, and the street faces pretty much in the direction of today’s capital of Germany.

Another adds:

The street below was previously known as Matthias-Erzberger-Ufer, after the Catholic politician and vice-chancellor of the Weimar Republic, who had signed the armistice at Compiègne in 1919, and was vilified by conservatives and right-wing press and politician until his assassination in 1921. It was renamed in 2011 after Moses Hess, the Jewish philosopher, who was an important precursor to Marx and Engels as well as to Zionism, and who, different from Erzberger, was actually from Bonn. You can see, in the lower left, across the street, a memorial for the Jewish community of Bonn, a fragmentary star of David, erected from the stones of the nearby synagogue, that had been destroyed during the pogrom of November 9, 1938. Strange contrast with the “party yacht” Poseidon moored behind it waiting for customers for a joyful booze cruise on the Rhine.

Another:

The best part of these puzzles is all the trivial knowledge I gain playing; this week: street lamps, European river cruises and EU vehicle registration protocol! I have yet to summon the courage to involve the front desk in getting exact room number. Maybe next time.

Another claims some bragging rights:

Yes! I beat my husband! (I always do.) I found the Hilton Bonn, Berliner Freiheit 2, 53111, Bonn, Germany after a Google search for solar energy bridges, while he was still going through all the bridges on the Danube : ) Here’s a picture of my guess for the exact window (my graphic skills aren’t quite as advanced as some of your readers’):

But there’s a hitch in this week’s contest, as the original submitter can’t remember the room number. What to do when that happens? In Chini we trust:

At first this seemed like it might be a toughie, but once I saw that there was a dead giveaway clue I knew you’d get quite a few correct guesses. This week’s view comes from Bonn, Germany. The picture was taken on the 3rd floor of the Bonn Hilton and looks due east to the town of Buele on the far bank of the Rhine.

One notable feature in the image is the Kennedy Bridge on the right. As you might guess, based on its aging pillars and abutments, the current structure is a post World War II replacement. The original, far more beautiful bridge was blown up by the retreating Wehrmacht on March 8th, 1945. Fortunately the demolition of the Bonn bridge was too little, too late. On March 7th, the U.S. First Army had captured the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen just 13 miles upriver and the door into Germany swung wide open. Here’s a black-and-white image of the original bridge and a marked overhead view of it from 1943:

For the truly curious, here’s a documentary on the capture of the Remagen bridge.

Several readers agreed with Chini’s window selection, but the prize this week goes to the reader with the most correct guesses in previous contests without yet winning:

I was upset with myself for not entering the past two weeks. I had a general sense of where the images were taken, but didn’t get to the right city quickly enough, and didn’t have the time to look further. I committed to solving this week’s image no matter how difficult. I started with the sense that we were looking at a northern European city, obviously on a river. But, all cities in Europe were built on rivers. Looking for clues, I noticed a light blue flag on the boat docked in front, and thought I’d start there. The blue colored European country flags were Greece, Sweden, and Latvia. It couldn’t be Greece, as this city looked northern. But, the flag was too light in color for it to be any of these countries. Nonetheless, I searched some cities in Sweden and Latvia before I abandoned that approach. After striking out in Sweden and Latvia, I tried to find the distinctive patio flooring that is shown in the picture. I couldn’t find it.

So, back to the flag. I found this flag for the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine. The color seemed right, and so did the river. Now, I really have no idea if this is the flag on the boat, but it brought me to the Rhine. So, I took a journey down the Rhine. After looking around at images in Basel, I decided to get more efficient with my search. So, I searched for Rhine bridges. The search quickly brought me to the Kennedy Bridge in Bonn, and it was a match:

The original bridge was completed in 1898. To see the animated gif of the stereoscopic view of that bridge, go here. The Bonn Hilton at Berliner Freiheit 2 is where this week’s picture was taken from. Here is a picture that shows the distinctive courtyard—the courtyard that I had hoped would help me on my search, but didn’t:

And where was the picture taken from? I think it was from the room I boxed in red:

I know that your consistently winning players always know the room numbers. That frustrates me, as I have never found a floor plan for hotel guest floors. Someday, I am going to win this thing.

Well that someday is today. From the reader who submitted the contest view:

Unfortunately, I don’t remember my room number from that trip.  I want to say it was 311, which would be the fourth floor because, like most European buildings, the ground floor is considered “zero”.   However, I would not bank on that memory of my room number, or even my floor.

I’ve stayed at the Hilton in Bonn several times, but this was the first time I had that river view, which I found immediately compelling. I took the picture just after sunrise and thought it captured a scene from that part of Germany perfectly – the bicyclist, the bridge, the boat, and the architecture across the river.  Bonn is mostly a university town, and I often tell people it’s like Albany, in that it was a small city to be a capital, with a good university, and is often overshadowed by its larger, more well-known neighbors, Cologne and Dusseldorf.

I took the picture the first week of February, in the heart of winter. While news of the polar vortex was dominating the news at home, Europe was having the mildest/warmest winter I can remember. I was able to take a few long runs along the Rhine in shorts, with just a long-sleeved shell on top. Normally, at that time of year in Northwest Germany, I run indoors on a treadmill because it is too cold to run outside. In fact, I chose the Hilton precisely because they have a good modern gym and I expected to use it that time of year, but I ended up just running outside along the river every morning.

It is apropos that you used my photo this week. While Andrew is enjoying warmth and sunshine on his vacation, I am stuck in his hometown of DC, which just got yet another generous helping of snow. Still, as I write you from my current hotel room, I can’t complain about my view:

(Archive)

A confident reader writes:

Easy one. This is Kuala Lumpur. Looks to be near Chow Kit and very near where I used to live and work. Lovely city, shame it’s not a better photo.

Another:

Quezon City, Philippines. Just a guess, but the buildings look very familiar.

Another looks closer:

Neoclassical architecture in a somewhat rundown location … Havana? Given the new cars on the street, I’m probably way, way off but I can’t think of another location that fits the bill. A tough one this week! Kudos to the reader who figures it out …

This week our hats are off to the small handful of readers who even ventured a guess. In fact, this might have been our most difficult contest yet. Another reader noticed an architectural hint of Italy:

I saw this and I thought: Porticos! Bologna! But Bologna (at least the parts I was in) didn’t look this drab and industrial. And these porticos don’t look like Bologna’s … but I thought I’d give a shout-out to Bologna anyway for being so stupendously endowed with 23 miles of porticos. (Are porticos the feminine opposite of masculine towers and spires? I get big domes as the outward opposite … maybe porticos are the inner opposite? People do a lot of socializing in them … )

Another must be joking:

That’s Nahant as viewed from Kelly’s Roast Beef on Revere Beach, MA.

This one definitely is:

Hell on Earth, Hades.

Other readers went south of the border:

Tall cactus, Spanish-style roof, Spanish language sign on the wall (Prohibido Fumar?), Catholic-style church, DirectTv satellite dish all point to Mexico, but I can’t home in on anything closer than this. So let’s go with Oaxaca, because it’s fun to say.

Two others guessed Mexico:

For no particular reason, I’m guessing Mexico. And I would like to propose a new sub-category for your contest: The Ugliest Building. I nominate that monstrosity in the left foreground. I hope someone found a way to stop the designer before he or she had a chance to work on a second building.

And:

Some churches get photographed a lot.  Take for example the little blue-domed jewel on the Isle of Santorini that shows up everywhere. The church in this week’s contest – not so much. While searching I did find this incredible mid-century monstrosity from Oklahoma City:

Now that’s a church I would have grooved to as a 10-year-old skeptic. As for this week, a semi-informed guess puts this somewhere in Latin America. A wild guess puts it in Aguascalientes, Mexico.

Latin America is right, and Mexico was the closest incorrect guess. A frustrated reader at least gets the right continent:

Fuck this shit. Twenty hours I’ve been at it, including a laborious wiki-google tour of every cathedral in Brazil, and I’m still not even sure I have the right continent. I’m going with São Paulo because they get DirectTV there, they’re big into roof-mounted radio antennas, and I found one (1) streetlight on Street View that matches the one on that utility pole. But who knows. This morning’s failed waking brainwave – a search for “ugliest cathedral” – was my official last gasp.

Only two readers even guessed the correct country, city, or address. One of them, naturally, was Grand Champion Chini:

Now this is a bit more like it. Though it was pretty obvious that we were dealing with South America, I had to overcome a personal misconception to get to the right spot. See, my only previous encounter with this week’s city was in Vonnegut’s Galapagos, a book which gave me the unfortunate impression of a much smaller town. As a result, I spent far too much time down in Argentina, when I should have been looking far to the north.

This week’s view comes from Guayaquil, Ecuador. The view looks southeast along a heading of 147.87 degrees, probably from a room on the 4th floor of the Hotel Oro Verde, perhaps room 406. A view of the actual window and a marked bird’s eye shot:

Here’s the original shot with the Edificio Forum and the Iglesia de la Victoria inserted:

But Chini won long ago, so here’s the winning entry:

Searching all over Latin America for last week’s contest (Medellín) paid dividends this week. After identifying the top of a San Pedro or Peruvian Torch cactus at the bottom of the photo and seeing all the AC units and open air arcades on nearby buildings, South/Latin America seemed like a good place to start. The shape of license plates on the many visible cars confirmed South/Latin America instead of the US or Southeastern Europe. A satellite dish on the nearest building indicated cardinal direction and rough latitude.

The primary architectural clue is the domed church in the distance. Latin America is full of these. A few searches IDed this one as Iglesia La Victoria in Guayaquil, Ecuador:

From there it took some Google Maps surfing to identify the tall, beige highrise with the rooftop radio tower, and from there the location of the photo: Hotel Oro Verde, next door to the (former?) US Consulate:

Hotel Oro Verde has online reviews with photos that confirm it as the window’s location:

Judging the room number is once more an educated guessing game. Based on analysis of sight lines, the estimated height of neighboring buildings:

From a photo of the hotel’s hallway, and assuming that floor numbers start with 0 in Ecuador, I submit that the room number is 512 or 513, depending on whether even or odd numbers are on the east or west side of the building:

Impressive entry! From the photo’s submitter:

I’m a 51-year-old US citizen doing my culinary externship in Ecuador. Finally I’m somewhere with a VFYW! This was taken from room 416 of the Oro Verde hotel in Guayaquil, Ecuador. So glad to have your site to keep me up to date while I’m away. I’m a proud (founding, I believe) subscriber. You and your team rock!

(Archive)

A reader details the scene:

Lots of post-war buildings -> a place that had to build a lot after the war. Decent-sized city. Mountainy hills. Bonsai-ish shaped tree. Facing Southeast. That’s all I’ve got. Kyoto, Japan?

Another in East Asia:

Jungly trees framed by stacked-tower high-rises and snaking mountains: could only be the landscape of Hong Kong!

Maybe it’s in Europe:

I swear that’s a Mediterranean city, and I think it could be Marseille on the French Riviera.  I’ve been there a few times (though it’s been a long time), and both the hills and the architecture look very familiar.

Or Central America?

My goal is to get the right city at least once. My guess here is based on the general impressions I have of San Jose, Costa Rica (city in a geologic bowl + Spanish tile at the bottom) and that the towers seem familiar.

Another heads south:

Santiago, Chile. Never been, but this picture makes me want to go.

Right continent. Another is thinking Brazil:

This is a great contest to be able to learn about other countries and cultures.  On a work-related visit to Sao Paulo a few years ago, on one of the tourist tours we got, it was mentioned that Sao Paulo was the city with most buildings in the world.  Since the photo show a large amount of buildings in a limited space, my best guess will be Sao Paulo.

Another city:

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil? The faded Brazilian flag on that far-off skyscraper suggests that I’m looking in the right place, even without the sight of Cristo Redentor to verify. I don’t know this neighborhood, so I’m guessing Jardim Botânico, near the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, looking north. The hills seem to match, although I don’t know that the residential buildings are actually as tall as these, or that there’s much new World Cup or Olympic construction in this part of town. These buildings seem more vertical than Rio’s, and I could keep digging, but this way madness lies. So a wild guess: the top floor of Rua Juan Carlos, 147, looking northeast.

(I enjoy the confident responses that turn out to be continents away from the truth, so I’ll be in amusing company if this is actually in southeast Asia. In any case, I suspect Glenn Greenwald will have a little laugh at my answer.)

Another moves down the map:

Montevideo, Uruguay. Because why not?

Another gets to the correct corner of the continent:

Just a wild guess, but this week’s contest photo really looks like Quito. I spent several weeks in Ecuador in January of 2007, and saw these kinds of clustered high-rises a lot. It was also the first (and so far only) time that I had the opportunity to eat guinea pig for dinner (aka “cuy”, a traditional Andean meal, and actually pretty tasty – but don’t tell my guinea-pig loving niece).

Also, kudos on the contest photo selections. I’m always amazed at the details that your readers are able to ferret out. I’d wager to say that the contest alone is worth a subscription to the Dish!

Another adds:

If I am right that this is Quito, it is a testimony to the descriptive skills of Didier Tronchet, a French illustrator who lives there, and whose illustrated tale “Les Vertiges de Quito” (Quito Vertigo), I read in the summer 2011 issue of the revue XXI.  I’ve never been to Quito, and as best I know I’ve not seen photographs of the city, but this photo reminds me of the city described and drawn by Tronchet.

Another joins the head-scratching:

So simple, yet so difficult.

The mixture of red brick and concrete construction – and the density of the buildings – make me certain this is Caracas, Venezuela.  But there are simply no distinguishing clues other than what looks like two letters (SW) from a large hillside sign.  That didn’t help and after hours of searching I cannot narrow down the location and I’m giving up in the name of marital harmony.  I will guess that it was taken from somewhere in the Altamira neighborhood.

Good puzzle. And thank you, by the way, for the excellent coverage of events in Ukraine. I can’t overstate how helpful it is when you pull together insight from other authors and tie it together with your own thoughts. Well worth the price of subscription.

Caracas was the most popular incorrect guess this week:

The unfinished building in the center reminded me of Homeland, in the scenes when Brody was in Caracas, in the Torre de David. Of course, those were filmed in Puerto Rico, and when I did a little research on the Torre de David, it’s clear that it’s not the main building in this picture. But I’m sticking with my gut, since Venezuela has been in the news.

Another gets the correct country:

Beautiful photo this week. The city looks at first glance like a lot of the major Latin American cities, some of which I know only from photographs: La Paz, Quito, Rio, Caracas. I was in La Paz and Quito some years ago and was surprised how vertical their skylines were. Yet something about this image doesn’t quite look like either. La Paz is situated more in a giant crater, with the boom-city of El Alto up along the rim, while Quito is hemmed in by giant, green volcanoes that look a lot steeper than the mountains here.

Based only on photos I’ve seen in the past, I’m going to say it’s Bogotá, Colombia, crossing my fingers that it isn’t one of the other cities that I’ve mentioned. Or worse, Medellín.

Worse:

I honestly don’t know how people do this contest.  I knew the Hossana, Ethiopia entry from a few months ago, but all that required was a quick glance (I didn’t know the town, but I did Peace Corps there, and knew it was Ethiopia). For this one, though, I have been searching for about an hour and a half, and all I have come up with is El Poblado district in Medellin, Colombia – and that’s thanks to my wife.  I know some one is going to get this one, but I don’t know how people do it week after week.

Medellín it is, and also in the El Poblado district.  Another reader guesses a nearby apartment building:

Well I was able to narrow this one down to Medellin with the help of two pictures (one from Google Earth, one from a traveller’s YouTube video). The short wide building on the right side of the photo is the Diez Hotel. But damn it! Google Earth and Google Maps are out-of-date (unable to keep up with the apparently insane pace of construction in Medellin, I guess), so locating the building where the VFYW photo was shot from was nearly impossible.

But I did find these photos, which I think were taken from the San Pedro de Alcantra apartment building, and judging by the views, this is the building seen in the foreground of the VFYW photo (below left), as well as a view from another complex (below right):

This must be the apartment complex where the photo was taken, but I couldn’t find the address, so my best guess for exact location is: Carrera 37A #11B-100, Seventh Floor, Medellin, Antioquia, Columbia

Another reader would take issue with that entry:

Assuming this view is in Colombia, please reject any submissions that do not spell ColOmbia correctly.

Another takes the time to explain an interesting feud:

My mom is from Bogotá, which has an old civic rivalry with Medellín that’s on par with the old hatreds between certain medieval English market towns or ancient Greek city-states. Below is a summary on inter-Colombian hatreds in case anyone is interested.

Bogotanos are stereotypically a bit cachaco – cold, distant and stuck-up in their manners like a British toff or Boston Brahmin. Bogotá is set up high in the Andes and has a climate similar to London. Residents used to wear woolen ruanas (ponchos) over their dresses and suits. Bogotá was also the old Spanish viceroyal capital. The presence of the Spanish court, and, later, the seat of the Colombian republic, brought with it all the stuff the goes along with the State in ambitious young countries striving for respectability: embassies, foreigners, archbishops, seminaries, learned professional societies, universities, cafes, bookstores, Marxists, pamphleteers, art galleries, the national language academy. Bogotá was dubbed once the “Athens of South America.”

Medellín is the young upstart city that grew on trade and industry. Think a mini-São Paulo or Birmingham a hundred years ago. The climate is much warmer than in Bogotá, though still temperate and spring-like. Its inhabitants are known, as the stereotype goes, for being wheelers and dealers and perhaps a bit relaxed in their morals.  There is a legend that the inhabitants of the region, known as pasias, were conversos – Sephardic Jews who presented themselves as Catholics to the outside world but who maintained Jewish law and beliefs in private. They were known more recently, and more infamously, for being at the heart of the narcotics trade and the home of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Bogotanos were concerned for a long time during the middle of the 20th century that their young paisa upstarts had outclassed them in terms of quality of life and development.  Medellín boasted (and still boasts) the country’s only metro system. Its city center was modern and clean. Its denizens were cosmopolitan and (in the middle of the 20th century) tango-obsessed – like a bunch of porteños (natives of Buenos Aires)! But, more recently, in the past quarter century, the capital has made important moves in the direction of humanistic and ecological urban design.  The Transmilenio bus rapid transit system is a massive success, as is the Ciclovía open streets program for bicyclists.  Soon Bogotá, if city hall can get their stuff together, will have its own metro. It’ll be underground, too. (What will you have then, Medellín?  What will you have then?)

Another reader gets back to the technical side of the contest:

I don’t know the street address but it’s the high-rise on Carrerra 37A, just above Calle 11B in the El Poblado district of Medellin. I’ve attached two maps to illustrate the building and angle of the photo:

I wasn’t able to find an image of the building, but my guess is a unit on the south-east corner. I’ll guess the sixth floor, based on the tree height.

Whew, this one was a doozy! After an embarrassingly long afternoon of Google searching, I found my Rosetta Stone: The modern white tower in the middle of the picture. I googled Calle 10, which is where I thought it was, and viola: a travel blog with a view of the building that clearly placed it. Now that I’d finally narrowed in on the hillside, I just needed to triangulate. I followed the probable sight lines and found that narrow tower (which sits on the south side of Calle 11B) and saw one tower looming in just the right location above it (with just enough foliage in between them).

I tried to figure out the address or whether it was a hotel for a while, but finally gave up. Man this game is hard without Street View!

Another found an alternative tool useful:

The key to solving it for me was finding a higher resolution picture on Flickr taken from a higher floor in the same building. It is hard to describe this week’s location because it isn’t a hotel and Google Street View does not include Medellín. I also couldn’t find the apartment on Airbnb. The coordinates for the building are 6.212764, -75.566072 and the closest address I could find is Carrera 37A No. 11B.  I will guess the 6th floor looking out south by southeast.

Attached are two pictures.  First, a side view picture of the tall apartment building across the street that also shows the building where the contest photo was taken.  Second, an overhead picture with a few labels.

Many contestants correctly identified the building, but only three guessed the right building name or address. This week’s winner was the only contestant to guess the right room:

After getting the right hotel in two much easier contests (Cebu City and Phoenix), this is the first time I’ve managed to solve what seems to be a more challenging VFYW. Getting to Medellin was actually the easy part. I haven’t been to South America, but the view immediately made me think of pictures I had seen of the northern part of the continent. After a few bad guesses with Quito, Bogota, and La Paz, I quickly settled on Medellin. Not too long after that, I found a similar view, and in that view the Cinemark theater was legible, allowing me to find this part of town on Google Maps.

From there, it got much tougher. The lack of Google Street View was a killer, forcing me to match 2D building tops on Google Maps with 3D skyline views in Google Images. Eventually, though, some unique buildings allowed me to nail down the location on Carrera 37A, and the address is 11b-73 – known as the Bosque de Plata, a 17 floor apartment building. Here’s a different view from that building (Apartment 1002), with both the tall building on the right and the Diez Hotel identifiable as the same buildings in the VFYW picture:

I believe I even found a couple pictures of the building from which this VFYW picture was taken (seen above to the right). Figuring out the floor and/or specific apartment is pretty much a guess. Given the level of the apartment in question relative to the building across the way, as well as the slope between those two buildings, I’m going with the 5th floor. And the picture below from 1101 had an angle on the Diez Hotel that was close enough to convince me that this was Apartment 501:

My family will be very pleased if I’m right, and thereby excused from future VFYW contests.

Oh you’ll be back! But otherwise congrats. From the submitter:

The photo was taken on Feb 10, 2014, 6:15 pm at Carrera 37A No. 11B-73, Apt# 501, Bosque de Plata, Medellin, Antioquia Colombia. It is located on a slope in the Poblado section of the city.

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