Category: View From Your Window

A reader writes:

Hmm, ten quey cranes narrows it down to the two hundred or so of the largest container terminals in the world. Palm trees indicate a tropical or subtropical climate. The other big hint is the word "fegic" on the building on the right. I googled that and got nothing of course, but I surmise that it is a Slavic name, possibly Serbo-Croatian or Polish. The buildings themselves appear to be a mix of early and late twentieth century construction. So … with all that, what do I have? I'd guess a large port in South America. Picture doesn't appear to be hilly enough to be Santos, so I'll go with Buenos Aires.

Another writes:

The architecture looks continental-inspired, almost French, and it is a commercial container-centric port, with the AT-ATs lurking in the background the way they do in Oakland. There is also the "fegic" brand on the building; Googling fegic yields lots of soccer-related results, but it's obvious it's a Slovenian surname. So we search for ports in Slovenia, and we get three major hits, of which only Koper looks commercial enough (the others look like yatch marinas). The palms had me worried, but several photos of Koper turn up palm trees. So we dig through photos via Google Maps, and we hit this one:

Sure enough, we have our cranes. But do we have other things? The warehouses in the background (or something very similar) turn up across the inlet from the cranes (centered on this map). From the angle of the photo, if those are cranes and warehouses, the roundabout is southwest from them, at an angle. And there's a couple roundabouts southwest from the warehouses that look like candidates map-wise, but there are no photos. So that's as close as I got.

Another:

I once read that 25% of the world's cranes are in Dubai, so it seems like a good guess.

Another:

Channeling the inner George W. Bush inside all of us, I'm going to go with my gut.  I dont need no stinkin' research to know that this is Oakland, California.  I know immediately because I recognize those giant cranes in the East Bay every time I drive home from Los Angeles to Marin County.  I ran lots of internet searches on "Tegic", and apparently it's a now a subsidiary of Nuance, Inc.  I searched all Nuance locations, and none of them looked like this, nor could I find one in Oakland.  But in the words of George W. Bush (ok, every single Republican candidate for President), no use letting facts get in the way of a good gut feeling. And since there just was a general strike to close the port of Oakland by Occupy Oakland, it is certainly topical and would make sense that you would put it up.

Another:

I don't remember a whole lot of palm trees in Seattle, the architecture doesn't remind me of the more brick Bostonian feel of the downtown port area and I wouldn't bet on a whole lot of roundabouts popping up in the Northwest either. However, the container cranes look like the famed AT-AT Star Wars Walker inspirations found in Seattle and Oakland, CA, and I'm pretty sure this isn't Oakland. A quick Google search also revealed Seattle as the headquarters of Tegic, a predictive text company and the name on the building to the right. (If it ends up being Oakland, I will not be a happy camper.)

Another:

Before it was bought by Nuance, Tegic had sites in Seattle, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, New Delhi, Singapore, London, Beijing, Seoul, and Sao Paulo. Of those places, right-hand traffic (RHT) nixed out the U.K., Singapore, India, Japan, and Hong Kong. The palm trees seemed to cancel out Paris and Seattle (in Seattle's case, the car on the sidewalk did as well). This left Sao Paulo, Seoul, and Beijing. Of these, a lack of over-urbanization seemed to cross out Seoul & Beijing, leaving Sao Paulo. Nuance Communications lists the Sao Paulo address as the following: Av. Majo. Sylvio Magalhaes Padilha, 5200, Ed. Quebec, Sala 109 Sao Paulo, SP 05703-010. This is my final guess. In conclusion, thanks to the contest, I learned about Tegic inventing T9, the Arecaceae family being a symbol of victory, and how many countries still use LHT thanks to former British colonization.

The previous readers guessed the wrong Tegic company. The correct one:

This view overlooks the stunning La Place Zallaga in Casablanca, Morocco and the dead giveaway clue: the world renowned architectural marvel of the headquarters of Tegic Logistique, recipients in 2007 of the prestigious ISO 9001 (version 2000) certification by the German agency TUV.  Leaders of the logistics revolution in shipping, transport, customs, and storage, Tegic Logistique began with the creation of the innovative Tegic Forwarding system.  Tegic's influence grew exponentially with founding of L’Ecole de Déclarants en Douane, ushering in a new philosophy of Customs and Declarations that has come to guide the logistics industry to this day.  Tegic Logistique – the last word (well, the last two words) in French speaking, North African, moving of huge containers.

Another makes the inevitable reference:

Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world … you had to pick one with a very unhelpful Google Map, and no Street View! But, thanks to the very helpful Tegic Logisitique sign on the building at 119 Avenue des Forces Armées Royales (FAR), I can at least guess that this view was taken from the Sheraton Casablanca Hotel & Towers across the street.

Nearly correct. This reader nails the right hotel:

This picture was taken from the Golden Tulip Farah Hotel in Casablanca. (When it comes to hotels, your readers sure can pick ‘em!) The obvious clue was the Tegic Logistique building, which matched perfectly with the picture on the company’s website. Google Earth couldn’t find the company’s address right away, but a straightforward Google search found a Sheraton hotel nearby.  That was easy enough to find in Google Earth.  From there, it was simply pinpointing the exact building of the window. This window was easy and fun! 

Above photo from another reader. Another:

Lovely hotel – there's a virtual tour available here.  I wish the Dish had enough financial muscle to award the VFYW contest winners with a short trip to the location in the photo – perhaps occasionally a hotel such as this one would spring for it in return for the superb advertising practically donated by the Dish for this weekly contest …

We get all our best ideas from readers. Another:

I lived in Morocco for a year on a Fulbright scholarship and I often came to Casa for work and for fun. The train station is a few blocks from the hotel so I immediately recognized the neighborhood by the port. Once, I went into the Golden Tulip to use their bathroom, and I'm happy to report their lobby has been more than fully restored after the 2003 bombing there.

Above image from another reader. Another notes:

The circle, Place Zallaga, refers to an important battle site at which Islamic forces soundly defeated the Christian army.

Another:

The architecture of the building on the left suggests a former French controlled region, and the foliage North Africa.  There are not that many large ports in the region. The two cabs on the right side of the picture (one red, one cream coloured) are typical of the city (I'm surprised there are not more of them).  Different cities in Morocco have cabs of different colours.

Morocco will have general elections next week.  All indications are that the new elections will not make a difference, as the new constitution adopted in June still concentrates all powers in unelected hands.

Another:

I had an instant, visceral reaction upon viewing the photograph. I spent a miserable two nights in Casablanca in the midst of an otherwise incredible backpacking trip through Morocco about five years ago. Two of my travel partners fell ill to a terrible stomach malady and couldn't leave the hotel. They were up all night fighting over the toilet. During the day, I had to wander about this city alone, fetching food and water. On the one sightseeing stroll I took for pleasure (to the Hassan II Mosque), I took a couple of wrong turns around the Medina and ended up on a side street where local youths threw stones at me. We only went there as a tribute to the movie – embarrassing mistake.

If there is a tie, I hope you'll make an exception for me, since winning this contest would be the only good thing that came out of those days in Casablanca. I would give the book to my travel partner who lost the fight for the toilet and had to use the sink.

There was an indeed a tie – among the 100+ readers who answered Casablanca, the dozens who got the right hotel, and the half-dozen who guessed the sixth floor. From the submitter of the photo:

I am in Casablanca on a business trip (teaching genomics lectures at Hassan university), and they put me up in a 4-5 star hotel. This is from room 608 at the Golden Tulip Farah hotel. The view though is anything but 5 star. Casablanca has some nice areas but is not the nicest cities in the world. Luckily, my family moments me tomorrow to take a trip to Marrakech, Fes and the Sahara.

The winner this week is the only sixth floor guesser who has previously gotten a difficult window (two, in fact) without winning:

Probably North African, given the continental architecture and the palm trees.  The port is notably big.  And then there is the TEGIC lettering on the building across the way (turns out it's an importer/exporter, with the motto "to say what one does and to do what one says" – a little ethical Easter egg for us?).  A couple of searches led me to Casablanca.  I thought at first that this photo was taken from the Sheraton, which is a few doors down, but in fact it's from the Golden Tulip Hotel.  I don't know precisely which window, and won't pretend, but my guess is sixth floor, given the height of the building across the street.

Congrats on winning the VFYW book. One final email:

Thank you, thank you, thank you.  Every Saturday, my almost two-year-old daughter takes her afternoon nap at 12:30, and my wife and I then settle in for our own nap, conveniently just after the VFYW contest is posted.  And every Saturday, just before she nods off, I indelicately shove the laptop into my wife-with-the-international-travel-job's face, who then mutters something along the lines of "I should know this but I don't,"  shrugs, and rolls over.   After a google search or two I quickly give up and take my nap, not to worry about it again until the answers on Tuesday.

But not this Saturday.  She still shrugged and rolled over, but this time a google search of "Tegic" quickly got me where I need to be:  The Golden Tulip Farah Hotel, I'm guessing around the 4th Floor, facing Place Zallaga in Casablanca.  I know I'm far from the only one who followed the easy clue and got this one, but I got this one.  And that's all that matters to me right now.  So thank you!  And now for that nap …

(Archive)

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

A dearth of diversity in this week’s entries. A reader writes:

Obviously taken out the window of a yacht; my guess is that it’s on the Intracoastal Waterway somewhere in South Florida. Presumably moored on the mainland side, looking west across to the barrier island that separates the waterway from the ocean all along the Florida coast. The only problem is that there are on scattered high-rises on the horizon, so it can’t be Ft. Lauderdale, Boca or Palm Beach. Also, the waterway is quite wide, which suggests somewhere south of Lauderdale but north of Miami. Therefore, looking toward Dania or Hollywood?  That’s hard to say; I haven’t been down that way in years. Don’t know the geography of those areas, and I’m not enough of a Google maven to be able to narrow it down better.

Another writes:

First time guessing, though I follow it almost every week.  Probably way off, but looking it made me think of the traveling south down the Saigon river out of Ho Chi Minh City.  Would feel bad if I was close and didn’t give it a try.

Another:

Of all the anonymous ferry terminals in the world, I figured I ought to pick one in a place where I’ve actually been. I went to Kurihama on a business trip around 1990. JVC has a facility there. Why Japan, when this terminal looks like it could be anywhere in the civilized world? Well, the dock has no bumpers. All the American ferry terminals I can see have big bumpers. Maybe the Japanese build them differently, because their terminals don’t seem to have them. And that white building could be vaguely Japanese. Beyond that, I got nuthin. I know Kurihama is wrong.

Another is correct:

I know this!

I drove by this spot several times a week when I lived in Stockholm.  This picture was taken from the Silja Line looking across at the island of Lidingö, specifically at Lilla Värtan.  The building to the right of the ship is the Scandic Ariadne hotel. I have included a few pictures of the area.  The first is a similar view, only taken from the water.  The second is a reverse angle of the picture for the contest [seen right] – it looks back at a similarly positioned cruise-liner from the dock with the hotel on the left.  The third picture gives a different angle of the hotel, including the small red building at the edge of the dock, which is visible from the contest picture.

I just love being out on the Stockholm archipelago (skärgård) and can’t wait to return to Sweden soon.  While I only lived there for two years, it sunk deep into my soul.

Another:

Some of my relatives in Sweden objected to the construction of such large residential buildings in Stockholm, feeling that it changed the character of the town which is built on a complex archipelago. (They lived about two miles farther out from the center of town, in the Täby area.)

Another:

This brought back lovely memories!  When my husband and I lived in Stockholm, we would take the Silja line ferry to Finland, mostly to visit family or stay at the summer house.  To this day, I love taking the overnight ferry ride between Finland and Sweden, enjoying the spectacular views of the archipelagos.  The company has changed hands, but the ferries still sail daily.

Another:

This contest was too easy and no fair.

This is from the bow of a Silja (now called Tallink) ship headed from Stockholm to Finland via the Åland islands. I think this is from a cabin window, one of the high price bow cabins, on level 6 or so. In the Google Maps pic, attached, the ship is reversed and in the opposite pier:

Which boat is it? The sun is hitting the building from the West, so it is evening. Whether it is the Serenade or the Symphony depends on which day the pic was taken. This time of year the Turku boats get in too late for the sun, so it is a boat leaving for Stockholm at 5 PM. But the time of the pic is problematic. Sunset is before 4 PM this week and the sun is still up when this picture was taken. Is it possible that the picture is a week old, from before daylight savings time?

Although I usually take the competing Viking Line ship, this white paint pattern was easy to recognize. This is altogether not fair. A couple weeks ago I took a pic I intended to send you of one of the Silja ships, along with the two viking ships, all dancing around each other in Mariehamn’s harbor, pic attached. Some of the Silja ships go to Stockholm, and those were not in the picture I took. The ones in my picture go to Turku/Abo. In the pic there are four boats. The one I am in and two others. Why four huge boats in one teeny harbor at one time?

First the simple facts. There are two competing Ferry companies, The Silja line (white boats, now called Tallink) and the Viking line (red boats). The have the same schedules (plus or minus 15 minutes). They each have a boat from Finland and a boat from Sweden meet in the middle of the Baltic at the harbor shown. For each of the four boats, most passengers switch boats at Mariehamn and go back to their home countries. So really the boats are boats to nowhere.

The back story. These ships represent a huge source of pollution that is caused by/subsidized by a strange EU policy. The semi-autonomous Åland islands of Finland have a special “tax-free” status in the EU. If a boat lands there, it gets credit for an international trip. So the boats can sell cigarettes and alcohol (and little trinkets of various kinds) tax-free. Most of the people riding on the boat from, say Sweden to Finland get off in Mariehamn (the Åland islands) and get right back on the ship coming from Finland and going to Sweden. The same the other way around. That is, people ride the ship for the tax-free experience, not to get anywhere.

Thus the economy of the Åland islands is held up by a tax-free law that makes for thousands of tons of carbon pollution. Without the special EU tax-free exemption for the Åland Islands, ferry traffic would go way down. Many of the passengers are induced to ride by the tax-free status that the stop gives. The Åland islands have a population of 35,000 people yet are served by 23 ferries per day. These huge ships, with thousands of passengers will stop for, literally, about a minute. Sometimes only one or two people will get on or off. Tons and tons of fuel for a tax exemption.

Another gets close to guessing the exact ferry:

It was pretty clear right away that the photo was taken from a ship in Northern Europe, but I spent a lot of time searching ports. I refused to accept that it wasn’t Turku, Finland, but, well, you can’t make it Turku when it’s not. Finally, however, I realized that the “road” on the bottom right is for car loading, and started focusing on ferry lines, instead of cruise ports. Which led me to Stockholm. The photo is taken from Tallink’s MS Victoria I, which connects Stockholm and Talinn. Below is my guess of the window, as well as an aerial of the port with two other possible ships in it (the Silja Serenade and the Baltic Queen). The blue around the windows in the photo, the fact that the Victoria docks facing outward (as opposed to the Serenade) and the radar in front makes me think it’s the Victoria, rather than those ships (or the MS Galaxy, which also docks there). But I could be wrong.

Nearly had it. From the most precise reader this week:

This is an interesting one because you’ve presented us with (for the first time, I think) a moving target. So let’s start with non-movable parts. We’re docked at the Tallink-Silja Line’s terminal in Värtahamnen, just east of central Stockholm, looking across to Lilla Vartan. I’ve marked the red roofed building in the foreground. The high-rise to the right in the window is the Scandi Ariadne Hotel, Positionen 117, Södra Kajen 37, 115 74 Stockholm. The unusual circular shaft on the side of the building is marked on the aerial view, as is the shadow of the radio tower beside the small building.

Across the water is Lilla Vartan, with two residential high-rise apartment projects visible. The ones on the left are on Bodelsvägen. These Google Steet Views [not pictured] are taken from a point half way between the two complexes. Looking the other direction, the red buildings and smokestack are visible. The red apartment buildings are on Larsbergsvägen.

Now, let’s deal with the moving target itself, the Tallink Silja Line’s Galaxy, which ferries passengers and vehicles from Stockholm to Turku, Finland. Here’s a picture of the ship at the dock. The Scandia Ariadne is just visible over the superstructure of the ship. Now, here’s a hard part, which is that the line’s Baltic Queen also uses this dock. But there’s a detail on the window of the suite in the photo which is telling: the strip of wood on the side of the window frame. These appear on in photos of Galaxy’s suites, but not in photos of the Baltic Queens.

Here’s the interior of a suite on the Galaxy. As you can see, the windows identify it. But which suite? I was unable to find a deck plan showing suite numbers, so if someone else has that, I’m toast. But here’s a shot of the ship with the window from which I believe the shot was taken marked in red. The radar on the bow looks quite modest from the window shot, but as you can see, it’s pretty big.

My first thought in looking at the photo was that it could be anywhere. But a look at the trees in particular made me think it wasn’t tropical, much more likely to be a higher latitude. And when I looked at the towers across the water, they looked European to me. Didn’t take long to find the dock, but identifying the ship and cabin took more work.

This is the third one I’ve identified. Hope I win!

Congrats! We will send you a VFYW book shortly. From the submitter of the photo:

This was taken from an aft cabin on the Galaxy ferry just as we were departing Stockholm on the Stockholm-Turku route through the Swedish-Finnish archipelago.

One more interesting story from a reader:

My adopted hometown, Stockholm, Sweden! My birthday is Monday, so this photo was like an early birthday present, making me homesick for one of my favorite places on earth. When I saw the picture, it took me less than a second to say “Stockholm.” The light on the buildings, the coastline and the water are deeply ingrained in my memory.

I’m from the Midwest, but I lived in Stockholm in 1977-78 when I was seven years old. My father was a professor on sabbatical, so our family moved to Stockholm. In those days, it was very uncommon for kids like me to have the opportunity to travel – let alone live – in Europe, and as a result that experience had a deep impact on my formative years and later life. My memories of that experience are some of my most treasured ones. In fact, we actually took a Silja Line ferry to Helsinki on our way to vacation in what was then Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In those years of Brezhnev and the Soviets, I vividly recall that trip because from the moment we arrived, we were constantly followed by the secret police (my father, along with hundreds of other academics at that time, had signed a petition supporting Sakharov and other Refuseniks and thus apparently landed on some sort of persona non grata list in the USSR).

The Silja Line (and Viking Line) ferries are overnight trips, sailing through the famously beautiful archipelago of Stockholm (not that the Swedes or Finns take in the view – the trips are also notoriously famous booze cruises … we were kept up all night by merry bands of drunken Scandinavians).

(Archive)

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

A reader writes:

Aw c'mon. No cars, no washing lines, no hills or mountains – not even a passing little fleecy cloud?  Just anywhere in the world that has palm trees and blocky buildings. I'll say somewhere in the Canary Islands just because.

Another writes:

Not far off the equator, the trees and hazy blue sky make sense, and the absence of any landforms in the distance suggest a coastal city. Fortaleza, Brazil? It's the birthplace of my adopted son. We were there six weeks while our case went through the courts. The colonial architecture alongside the squat concrete office towers is quite familiar.

Another:

I always look at the VFYW contests with amazement that anyone can identify what look like such generic views. But this one seems to have a corner showing La Casa Rosada, as well as palm trees.  When I saw it several years ago, I was admiring of a people who could claim a Pink House as a national symbol. In the US, I'm certain it would be considered "too gay."

Many readers guessed along these lines:

I believe this is a picture of the Egyptian Museum, which is located on Cairo's Tahrir Square. Seeing the color and style of the pink building, plus the palm trees, brings me back to that location in Cairo. I must've visited that museum 10+ times when I lived there. It is incredible, stuffed full of Egyptian artifacts from every dynasty. Many hallways in the museum are lit only by natural light coming in through windows, the dead bulbs in the museum's lighting system having been ignored seemingly for years. More museum pieces lack identifying information than do, and for many items and objects, all the description you get is the original typewritten notes of the 19th century archeologist. That place defines kitsch, in the museum world.

Another:

Oh my … I think I found it. My sister is on Hajj right now, so I've been thinking about Mecca lately… but the VFYW photo looked different somehow (mind you, I've never been there/complete speculation) so I checked out Jeddah.  Lo and behold, I found someone's photo during a random search on Flickr and I swear this is the same white, cubed building.  Maybe a few blocks off, but it sure looks like it. Of course, I'm probably wrong – like last week.  *sigh*

Another:

My hunch is that you couldn't resist choosing a photo from Greece, given the turmoil it has been causing in the EU. Googling Athens, palm trees, and white buildings resulted in some reasonably similar photos. My 9-year-old, who loves a good puzzle (especially it if involves geography), was certain Athens was the right place based on the combination of red roofs, white office buildings, and older, yellow buildings. Since Google didn't help us with street-views, I'm going with the 9-year-old.

Another:

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam? District 3 looks likely. Assuming I am not wildly off the key clues: Colonial architecture – Yellow like that seems to mean French. Palm trees and sky mean sub/tropical with a lot of rain – so probably Indochina. The look doesn't match Cambodia or Lao.  So it's Vietnam, and HCMC is a better match for the look than Hanoi. I think this photo may have an image of the hotel in the upper central part of the photo.

Another:

I'm sure you're getting a lot of guesses from Southeast Asia. We're on a three-day weekend here in Singapore, so my family will only forgive a bit of googling. So let me just throw out the Bamboo Green Hotel, Danang, Vietnam, fifth floor. I've got no good maps or images. But here's hoping my shot in the dark is close.

Correct floor, wrong continent. Another:

With all the palm trees, it's gotta be Madison, WI, right?

Another:

That's it, I'm going with my gut here. Where else has that strange mix of semi-fading colonial buildings, zoning that allows mid-sized towers seemingly at random, and mixed tropical and deciduous trees? Macau or bust; I'm going to keep guessing EVERY WEEK until I get it!

Another gets on the right track:

Palm trees and French windows and zero other clues. Most people will therefore guess somewhere in the former tropical French Empire, and the best way to win in such a random hurling of darts at a map is to pick somewhere really obscure – after all, if it really does turn out to be Senegal or French Guinea or somewhere obvious, somebody will manage to get it right down to the street. So I pick Toliara, Madagascar, a place I have never heard of before and never will again.

Another nails it:

The photo was taken from the Novotel Hotel in Dakar, Senegal.

Not much to go on this week! Those arched windows at the top of the tallest building suggested a potentially Islamic influence, the palms keep it out of extreme latitudes, and the pink and yellow buildings suggest that it could be in just about any place except North America and Europe.

Among other places, we searched Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, Kinshasa, Bogota, Mexico City, Caracas, Lima, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, New Delhi, Santiago, Panama City, San Jose (Costa Rica), Lagos, Cairo, Durban, Casablanca, Nairobi, Algiers, Tunis, Bermuda, Kingston, Tegucigalpa, and a couple cities in Pakistan, just for good measure. In nearly every place we were able to find something that looked similar. 

In the end, though, searching through African capital cities landed us in Dakar, and this photo. After that it was just a matter of finding the place. Here is a Google Earth view is attached.

The buildings next door house the Institut Francais, which contains La Galerie Le Manege, which has some virtual tour views from the interior courtyard that isn't quite visible in the photograph. There are remarkably few photos in Panoramio, but this view, also from the Novotel, is a little more to the west. From that photo we can see that the top of the pink building is roughly at the same height as the fourth floor. Since we're looking down on the top of that building, the photo was probably taken from around the sixth floor.

Another Dakar entry:

What I thought were black people and an open-top jeep or buggy in the bottom right corner of the photograph made me think Africa. The pink building reminded me of the French parts of New Orleans, but the city didn't feel right. So instead I started looking at French-colonised Africa. Cote d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone felt wrong but a lot closer. Then I saw a photograph of the Dakar cityscape, featuring a grey building with about as many floors as the one in the photograph, as well as the radio spire. Another photo confirmed the find, bearing the title 'Skyscrapers in Dakar are not very pretty'. The tallest skyscraper in the photo, with the radio spire, is the Immeuble Fahd. I think our photo was taken from the Novotel Dakar, about three or four levels up. Attached is an image of Dakar showing both buildings:

Another:

This is a fantastic way to while away Saturday afternoon.  I was one of a million people to get the correct street last week, but I didn't get the address.  I started this time with South America, picking up on the colonial buildings and palm trees.  I couldn't find anywhere sufficiently flat, and near the water, without a million skyscrapers.  West Africa seemed like the next logical choice.  Took some googling, but the building to the right is pretty distinctive, so eventually I zeroed in on Dakar. I'm reasonably certain that I've picked the right window, although it could be a little below, or to the right as you face the hotel:

Looks like a nice place.

Several excellent entries, but the prize this week goes to the only Novotel guesser who has gotten a difficult window in the past without winning:

This week's VFYW offers me the chance to redeem my very first VFYW guess – my most off-base guess ever. Back in the early days of the contest, before submitters had learned to exploit the powers of Google Earth, I guessed that the that the image was actually taken in Ft. Lauderdale, I was so embarrassed by my inability to discern architectural differences between US and Senegalese buildings that I more or less gave up on the contest for one year. Since then, your readers' winning submissions have taught me how to properly sleuth these images and have even got a few correct, non-winning answers in recent months.

In any case, I knew this week's VFYW was Dakar because of the distinctive high rise Fahd building, the colonial architecture, and the neem shade trees (during my Peace Corps days I processed leaves from these trees into the most awful-smelling organic pesticide imaginable). The VFYW was taken from the Novotel in the Plateau neighborhood of Dakar, from what looks like the fourth floor. The attached images show the distinctive features of the scene, as well as an aerial shot of the approximate view from the window.

I'm afraid I don't have any good stories from the Novotel, but hidden behind the yellow buildings with the tile roofs is an amazing, open-air rooftop cinema boasting lounge seating and table service – it's easily the best movie theatre I've ever been to. Ironically, it's also where I watched the worst movie I've ever seen: Madonna's Swept Away (apologies to Aaron).

From the submitter:

The photo was taken from my 5th floor hotel room at the Novotel Dakar on Avenue Abdoulaye Fadiga, where I was staying for a week while in Dakar for work. I work for The Rotary Foundation, which is the charitable arm of Rotary International, a global humanitarian service organization. The event taking place in Dakar was a project fair, bringing together Rotary clubs worldwide to help enable and implement projects that will benefit countries in West Africa.

(Archive)

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

A reader writes:

Awesome! It's clearly from the East Bay looking across the bay! Mt. Tamalpais, housing style, and of course the fog all support that. Cranes and tall office buildings: it's on the outskirts of Oakland, looking over the harbor.  This is an easy one, so I'll have to hurry to beat the hordes of correct answers that will be pouring in over the next hour or so.

Another isn't as confident:

OK, I'm convinced this is Portland.  But I can't pin it down because… where are the pine trees??  But if it is, I'm going to say NW Portland. But then, I kept thinking … let's try someplace in the news with few evergreens: Nashville?  Does Nashville even have a mountain nearby? How about Denver?  No, the mountain is too small.  I'm lost, but I'm taking a stab. Oakland? Nah, too few buildings and no palm trees.  OK, Portland, yes … Portland.  Final answer.

Another:

It was either the Pacific Northwest or Scandinavia this week, and I didn't think the buildings looked old enough for any of the classic Viking towns. Having lived in Seattle for a brief time a while back, I immediately thought of Puget sound. I went ahead and scanned around for red-roofed houses in the vicinity. This is the part where someone is always better than me, having missed out by a few houses in the past (or a few towns over, in the case of Libya). So I'm going to go with 344 N 4th Street in Tacoma, Washington. And now I'm suddenly thirsty for an Oly stubby …

A sharp detour:

I lived for three years in Almaty, Kazakhstan and this looks a lot like the view from the Kok-Tobe area of the city.  With the oil boom, there has been a ton of construction since I left in 2004, so it is hard to recognize for sure. However, the sloping terrain with mountains, old-Soviet style buildings and new construction lead me to think the photo is taken from one of the bedroom communities that have sprouted up on the slopes of the Ala-Tau mountains south of Almaty.

For what it is worth, Almaty was a delightful place to live.  It is a very livable city with quick access to outdoor activities.  We used to have a Niva, a Russian jeep, that we would take up to the mountains for skiing in the winter and hikes in the summer.  The people are wonderful as well – a very nice mix of Kazakh and Russian populations.  The government is corrupt as hell and autocratic to boot, but you can't get everything!

Another:

I have no idea how people find the energy for long searches for their answers, though they may get closer than me since I's stabbing in the dark.  But, it seems like Astoria, Oregon to me … near the home where Mikey and the other Goonies are trying to save when they find Chester Copperpot's treasure map.

Here's a teaser of the house where the photo was taken, which many readers sent similar images of:

Exact address to follow. Another guess:

My guess is Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The houses look NZ or Tasmania-ish, and the cars appear to be driving on the left. The mountains in the background look like Mt Wellington. And it's raining, which is pretty typical for Tassie.

Another:

Piece of cake! Wellington, New Zealand. Photo taken from the suburb of Thorndon.  That's Mt Victoria in the distance. The Law School, with its distinctive architecture, is the building with the red roof beyond the park.  To the left of the cranes in the distance is one of the lights from the "Cake Tin", as the local rugby stadium is known.

I would guess that this was taken near Grant Road and Wadestown Road, just below the town belt.  I could spend more time improving on this, but I'll content myself with looking forward to Tuesday, when I can read all the interesting anecdotes about the city that I was lucky enough to call home for three years.  I left two and a half years ago to go on my "OE", or Overseas Experience, as we Kiwi twentysomethings call our working holidays abroad, but while I am loving my adopted home of Berlin, Wellington, despite the short period of time I lived there, is the place I call home. Oh to be sitting in a cafe on Cuba St right now enjoying a long black!!

Dozens of readers correctly answered the New Zealand capital. One labels the sites in sight:

Another:

This is obviously Wellington, given the terrible weather. Wellington is an absolute nightmare of a place, with appalling wind and rain and a dreadfully grim microclimate, perhaps because it is the nations capital and someone didn’t want our politicians staying there too long.

Unfortunately the deluded in Wellington believe in the unbelievably trite "You cant beat Wellington on a good day" – which happens about twice a year, and can easily be beaten by numerous other places in New Zealand. Wellington’s marketing slogan is Absolutely Positively Wellington, and they spend an awful lot of money on it trying to convince themselves Wellington is not terrible. Wellington conforms nicely to the theory that a place has to spend money promoting itself in amounts inversely proportional to its quality.

Apart from the grim, grey weather, the photo easily identifies Wellington by the stadium on the left, Westpac Stadium, known as the Cake Tin, or Wellington Regional Stadium by the clowns at the International Rugby Board during the recent world cup where all stadia had to be handed over to them clean so they could make a killing on reselling commercial rights to other companies. By the looks of things the photo is take from Newman Tce, Thordon, Wellington. The view is across thordon to the CBD, and you can see the Beehive, a hideous monstrosity of a building that serves as part of parliamentary complex.

Another:

Wellington houses are all built from weatherboard because right at the foot of this street is the Wellington Fault, which one day will move giving Wellingtonians the earthquake they have been expecting for a while, and wooden-framed and clad houses have a lot better chance than brick or similar. When Wellington does get shaken up, people are expecting all the flat land down below to tilt back under the water  taking with it the NZ Parliament and most government departments.  Some New Zealanders would not be too upset if that happened.

Another:

So this is either really embarrassing and I am so homesick that I am superimposing my home country on your view of the day, or it's hilly Wellington. I am writing from rural West Africa (yay Nigeria!) where internet bandwidth is very 2002. Fun Wellington fact: This city is earthquake central. The Terrace, which is banking HQ of our tiny country, is ON the fault line. And fun Auckland fact: that damn island in the harbour is a LIVE volcano. New Zealand is lovely – come buy a house and run away from the recession … but insurance might be recommended.

Another:

Damn this is a picture that everyone from Wellington will get in a moment and it shows beautiful New Zealand at its ugliest and shabbiest. The main clue that this is Wellington is the dismal weather. In the background you can see the southern end of the Wellington regional stadium where many games were played during the recent Rugby World Cup, won by New Zealand's awesome All Blacks:

Behind the stadium are the Hurry Cranes, named after the local rugby team, the Hurricanes, who are based at the stadium, and whose players are the best All Blacks.

Another:

I was in Wellington in December 2007, and stayed in the downtown area near the National Library of New Zealand and Parliament, in Pipitea.  I believe this view is from just north of there, looking southeast across Wellington and the harbor to Shelly Bay. I could sure go for a flat white and a lamington's right now.

Another:

There's something very special about a hilly city on a bay.  Places like Capetown, Valparaiso, and San Francisco all have their magic.  From what I can tell, Wellington has a similar atmosphere and I've always wanted to visit.  It's supposed to be a vibrant place for its size.

On to the exact address:

The trees look like a temperate climate but the leaves show no signs of yellow so it must be spring rather than fall. The combination of the English style houses and the dramatic hill across the waterway made me start with New Zealand. I tried Auckland first but it looked too flat. Wellington had the hill across the bay but I couldn't find the right view at first. I could see the shipping area and light stanchions from the stadium but I couldn't get the view to line up with the high-rises pictured. I was looking from too far south at the larger neighborhoods uphill from downtown. Then I finally found Newman Terrance and new I had the right location. Then the power went out. It was Saturday evening, now its Tuesday and we just got it back on, just in time!  I'm scrambling a little but I'm sure it was taken from #36 Newman Terrace, the white house with the blue roof at the top of the hill. The house with the red roof is #34.  Here's the google earth view from that location that matches the VFYW.  Whew.

Another:

Googling 36 Newman Street, Thorndon, Wellington brings me to this real estators page, with the bottom image showing the living room and the orange-tiled house in front, so this week's image has been taken from: The right-hand living room window from the last house on the right (number 36) at the top of Newman Terrace which may also have zig-zag (stepped footpath) access to Wadestown Road above. If I'm lucky enough to be close to a tie-break, I hope that my birthday falling on the Tuesday 1st of November (the closing date of the competition) is enough to sway someone's heart!

Happy birthday!  But the address was just a hair off. From the submitter:

Thanks for using my photo for this week's competition! I thought it might be useful to flesh out the details of the photo, so you can select a winner.  The picture is taken from the 1st floor (2nd if you are American) of 34 Newman Terrace, Thorndon, Wellington – my in-laws' house.  It is looking out across the city and the harbour towards Mount Victoria, which is shrouded in mist in the background.  Not untypically for Wellington – one of the four windiest capital cities in the world – the weather is not great.

My wife – whose home town it is – and I lived there in the 1990s.  (Originally I am a Brit of Andrew's vintage from Abingdon, now based in DC.)  We were visiting there last week for the rugby world cup, and I took the shot on the morning of the 23rd, before flying to Auckland to see the All Blacks narrowly edge out France in the final.  Here – completely gratuitously – is a shot of Piri Weepu, New Zealand's scrum half; that is some impressive beardage.

Of the dozen or so readers who correctly answered "34 Newman Terrace", two have gotten difficult windows in the past without winning, so two readers get the prize this week. One writes:

Although I've never been south of the equator, this scene looked antipodean to me, and as there seemed to be dockside cranes in the background, I checked out the harbour areas of Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland, none of which turned out to have hills like the one seen in the background of the competition image. When I looked at Wellington, I spotted the stadium as well as the hill with the correct profile. The satellite dish pointing towards the photographer near the centre of the image indicated that if it was in the southern hemisphere, the view was looking south. Taking this clue, by lining up the stadium and dock cranes, I narrowed it down to a rough area and then looked for an orange roof of the correct shape with a blue-roofed house nearby, which I found after a short search on Google Maps.

The identification of the specific window was more challenging. It's clearly high a elevation, but Newman Terrace appears to be on a very steep slope. With Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Google Streetview, I believe that I've identified the window, as labelled in one of the attached images. I ruled out the ground/street level windows, and believe that it's taken from the upper floor. Sightlines of features that were aligned in the competition image were found to converge on quite a small spot. Although it's tempting to go for the prominent bay window visible in Google Streetview, it appears that the photo was either taken from the extreme right hand edge of that window as seen in Streetview, or from the window directly under the roof's ridge line. Because of the alignment of the roof tiles on the adjacent house, I've decided to opt for the smaller window, labelled.

In the distance on the left can be seen the Westpac Stadium, at which key games of the recent Rugby World Cup took place, including Wales's quarterfinal win over Ireland on October 8th.

A schematic from the other winner:

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

We have another winner to add to yesterday's results.  For some inexplicable reason, this winning entry was marked as spam when it was sent to us on Sunday and only a subsequent email last night alerted us to the mishap. Our reader (who should have been the sole winner, given his precision) writes:

After the "which window was which issue" in Edinburgh, and with last week’s view being too non-descript for me, I was so looking forward to this week’s VFYW contest. What a great way to laze away a Sunday morning.  So, let’s see if this works:

The photo had all the look and feel of an urban street in North Africa or, perhaps, the Middle East, and given the low number of entries last week, I thought you might go for something topical.  That’s what lead me immediately to Libya.  Figuring I’d go to Tripoli last, I first tried Sirte (which looked promising, but not quite right), then Misrata (whose streets didn’t appear to have any of the parallel parking lots set off the road by concrete as depicted in the VFYW), and then, finally, to Benghazi.  Perfect!

Here’s the building: The Alnoran Hotel (also spelled al Noran, Al Nooran, Alnouran, and the Nouran), on Al Jazayer (Algeria) Street, in Benghazi, Libya. And, given the size of the view and the angle, the window (which appears to be in the hallway/stairwell).

I think you’re likely going back to 300-400 entries this week.  So, good luck.

Another tough one this week. A reader writes:

Dante's Hell doesn't seem to be in Google Maps yet, but based on his description in Canto VI of The Inferno, this must be somewhere in the Third Circle: "In the third circle I arrive, of show'rs / Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang'd / For ever, both in kind and in degree" (H. F. Cary translation).

Seriously, I'm sure that wherever this is some of the inhabitants must be wonderful people, but human beings were never meant to live in places as bleak as this one.

Another writes:

No American cars, so this is definitely not any part of North America. The weather indicates that this is the northern hemisphere.  The building have a Soviet-style dreariness to them.  The landscape is extremely flat, and I get the feeling that this is near the sea.  So I'm guessing Vladivostok, Russia.

Another:

For no particular reason, I think it could possibly be Ulan Bator, in Mongolia. I have this book of photos from a tour a group of professional skateboarders and photographers took to Ulan Bator when they were traveling the Trans-Siberian railway, and the photo resembles every landscape shot in the book; dreary, vapid and ultimately, brown-colored. Just looks and feels desolate, although they say the kids really sprang to life in the presence of a skateboard. Pretty cool.

Another:

Vaguely Burmese pagoda-like inspiration for the tall building in the center, kind of Stalinesque feel to the rest of it, including a wide avenue and little traffic, buses. Low clouds and maybe a hint of mountains in the background.  Naypyidaw, Myanmar is my story and I'm sticking to it.

Another:

I love shots of urban bleakness and this one is hard to beat in that category.

I was watching "Radioactive Wolves" last night on Nature and this architecture seems comparable to that seen around Chernobyl.  Going to make a wild guess at Simferopol in Crimea simply because I like that name.

Another:

Boston? Just kidding. However it looks like what urban planners of the '40s and '50s envisioned for Boston, and did partially execute:

Another:

I'm going with Turkey for a couple of reasons. 1) I think I can make out the distant outline of a multi-minaret mosque on the skyline. Multiple minarets tends to be a Turkish thing. 2) One of the buses appears to have a logo which might be that of the Turkish tour company Kamil Koc (I'm not actually very confident about this last point, but I'm not going to pass up a chance to say Kamil Koc). Once I settled on Turkey, the picture looks dusty and poor-ish, which probably means Anatolia. Nevsehir is a town small enough to be dusty, big enough to have apartment buildings, and close enough to a tourist destination (Cappadocia) to have buses. Kamil Koc buses.

Heh. Another:

This scene is typically Egyptian based on the semi-unfinished buildings, the desert environment, the tour buses, and the wide highways. However, because it is not dense in the picture it can't be Alexandria or Cairo, that's why I'm guessing an area on the desert road from Cairo to Alexandria, on the outskirts of Alexandria, Egypt's second city – the city where my parents are from, and the one-time "Pearl of the Mediterranean." Those days are long gone.

Another:

It looks like Heliopolis, the northeastern suburb of Cairo, on the way out to the airport. The construction technique of the buildings in the upper left of the photo – a concrete frame filled in with bricks – is characteristically Egyptian (although what looks like rain in the distance is not).

Another:

Somewhere in the Middle East, not too wealthy, a bunch of Westerners driving around in not especially nice cars, and looks like that might be a hurricane in the distance. Looking for recent hurricanes around there, I find one that hit Masqat and Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is where they pave the streets with gold and make buildings out of diamonds, so I don't think it's there, so Masqat, Oman it is.

Another:

I think this photo shows Zubayri Street in Sana'a Yemen, from SW of the Officers' Club that is south of the old cemetery at the corner of Zubayri St and Abdul Mughny Street. The cemetery is southeast of Bab al-Yemen and the Old City. You can see where the intercity buses board – the ones that go to eastward destinations like Mareb and Hadhramawt. (There are other boarding points for other intercity buses.) I have no romantic stories of hotel rooms overlooking the bus depot, but I have traveled eastward from there many times. Such a wonderful country, Yemen, and I hope only the best for its people through their current transition.

Another gets close:

A complete wild-ass guess, but the flat-roof air-raid architecture, buses, and soccer on cement reek of dictatorship point to Sirt, Libya. Given your predilection for linking the VFYW to momentous events, this must be where Gaddafi/Qaddafi/Bob Dylan-on-cocaine was killed.  I'd write more but I have a nasty cold and the ephedrine has already said enough.

Libya it is. Another:

Tripoli? Guessing this building circled here in the attached image, on Shari An Nasr near the Dahra bus station:

I don't have any stories about Libya to make my case, but it looks like the classic dust storm, a "haboob" blowing up, and I know that the assault on Sirte was delayed a bit for a recent sandstorm, so I'm hoping this is close to being right. None of the major hotels in Tripoli looked quite right with their surroundings, so this is what I've come up with. I bet you'll get a lot of interesting guesses with this one, here's hoping this is the closest! At least I've been able to use the word haboob today, which both gives me the Beavis and Butthead jollies and pisses off the folks who worry that Sharia law is somehow supplanting the American judicial system, making it a double win in my book. Haboob!

But only one nailed the correct city:

This might be the week for a view from Libya.  I'm guessing it's by one of the bus terminals on Algeria St. in Benghazi just north of the city center.

A hearty congrats on one of our toughest ones yet. From the photo's owner:

It's from the second floor window of the Al-Nooran Hotel in Benghazi, Libya. The hotel is marked on Google Earth. There are a few hints – the architecture and palm trees are typical Middle Eastern/North African, green facade on on some of the buildings and the slightly rusty hue of iron oxide in the concrete, and the broad but uncrowded streets all hint at Libya. The odd structure next to the hotel is quite visible on Google Maps for someone who wants to spend hours searching every North African city intersection. Anyway, not an easy one.

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