View From Your Window – Page 77

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #152

A reader writes:

The fogged-in, treeless channel with fishing vessels and the red-roofed single building. I see the North Coast of Iceland. (Though as good a guess might be Invercargill, New Zealand, which has the same look at the diametrically opposite side of the world.)

Another:

Reykjavík? Plainly, this is Iceland. No other country in the world has such distinctive window latches.

Another:

Not a lot of time to look around this week, so after what appears to be a left hand drive car, chimneys instead of air-conditioning, I am going to guess Scotland. Google gave me some obvious fishing villages to start, and Lewwick seems to be a real chance.

Another:

Norway?, Scotland?, Ireland?, Newfoundland?, wait! – that van is a Chrysler product so USA or Canada only – plus the license plate isn’t extra wide like in Europe. Newfoundland?, Victoria?, Puget Sound?, zoom in on the license plate, wait! – isn’t that an Oregon license plate? Sort of looks like a little bit of green in the middle of a white plate so could easily be the Doug Fir tree. Of course, someone from Oregon could easily drive up to the Puget Sound or B.C. but I’ll go with the better odds: Oregon. Columbia River or Pacific Coast? Those boats make me think coast for some reason.

So where on the Oregon coast would there be a harbor like that? First thought to pop into my mind: Astoria, Oregon. Where in Astoria though? I used to live in Oregon but I’ve never been to Astoria and I’m not one of those people who spend hours on Google Earth trying to pinpoint locations for these contests and it’ll probably turn out to be New Guinea or Uruguay or someplace like that anyway. I wonder what the next post is about …

Another:

From the looks of the port city and the building under construction on the right side of the photo, I’m guessing this was an area impacted by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. I remember seeing a YouTube video of a port being inundated with a shopping center on the shoreline. In looking online, I couldn’t find the name in the particular video, so I will guess Kesnessuma, in the Miyagi Prefecture.

Another:

I’m going to Norway at the end of the month. This VFYW looks a lot like the pictures I’m seeing in the travel books I’m using to plan my itinerary. The weather looks about right for this time of year and the scene kind of matches my preconceived idea of what the Norwegian fjords and ports will be like. There are a lot of places I could choose, but I’m going with Stavanger.

Another:

Well, not much to go on this week, but here is my reasoning: the cars and the license plates look American but the building in the foreground has a Scandinavian feel to it. It also seemed to me like the red and white boat looks a lot like many in the Coast Guard’s fleet. And where would there be cold and damp weather still at this time of year? So I googled where there are Coast Guard stations in Alaska, and it turns out that there is one in Petersburg, Alaska. Plus, the town’s nickname is “Little Norway” because it was founded by a Norwegian, and on Google Earth you can see many of those red-roofed buildings. So maybe the photo is taken from the Morning Mist Bed and Breakfast, second floor?

Another nails the right location:

It’s a bit ironic that while on a business trip in Bangkok, a very exotic location for me, you publish a photo of a place that I consider very familiar, also through work. We’re overlooking the harbor of St John’s, Newfoundland, a beautiful place that is very fishing oriented, which is what draws a Massachusetts-based marine biologist like me to it. The harbor entrance is off to the left, and you can’t see Tower Hill, a very nice place to overlook the city and the Atlantic Ocean. St. John’s is way out into the Atlantic, and nearby Cape Spear is the furthest east one can go on the North American continent. The people are very, very friendly, and they like to drink and play music and sing, and they like you to come along, too.

I know I won’t win – this one is too easy, and I frankly detest the minute detail of winners who determine which hotel room, how high, la la la. That’s just silly. So I’m just happy to know after many years of reading your blog, I finally nailed one, as well as I care to.

A cool view of the hotel:

Details from another reader:

My spouse lived at the Murray Premises Hotel for a few weeks back in 2010, as part of the Opera on the Avalon Festival, and we visited her there for the last week. Her room was in an annex that faced Water Street, on the other side of this view, near where George Street connects – so if any readers know St. John’s they know that we had to wear earplugs to bed. George Street is perhaps the booziest party street on the planet – and that’s not hyperbole. To quote Wikipedia: “The street has the most bars and pubs per square foot of any street in North America, and is known to have bars that are open later than most others throughout Canada.” There was a 24-hr restaurant directly across the street where revellers would go to eat after the bars closed, then come out and barf into the street.

The photo is taken, I believe from the second floor of the Murray Premises Hotel, facing Harbour Drive. The parkade (as we call them here in Canada) is on the corner of Harbour and Beck’s Cove as part of the Bowring Downtown Centre (Bowring was originally a Newfoundland company est. 1811, a huge company with ships, provisioning, and trade on a worldwide scale in the late 19th and early 20th century – now is a gift store chain). If I’m not mistaken the photo is taken from just outside (or perhaps inside – I can’t quite remember the layout) of the breakfast room.

A local snaps a photo:

It happens, it really does happen! One sees the View from your Window Contest and says: I know that place! Even better: That’s here! I’ve seen other people have such reactions; I never dreamed that I’d be the same one day.

Another reader:

This is a view from the second floor of the Murray Premises Hotel overlooking St. John’s cove. I recognize it because my mother did some demographic research on the 1918 flu there and I spent a few weeks with her in the summer.

Another:

Having Lived in Newfoundland for six years while going to school, I recognized this location immediately. The big Irving oil sign on the opposite hill was a dead give away. Still my favorite place on earth, would move back in a heartbeat if I could.

Another:

St John’s is a wonderful place with friendly people and appalling weather. After a business trip there years ago, while filling out my expenses back at home, three and a half time zones away, I noticed for the first time that the charming waitress who had served us in a downtown restaurant had left her phone number on the back of the receipt. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before or since. Regrets, I have a few …

Another:

I’ve been reading The Dish for yonks, but I’ve never actually sent am email on any topic. I’ve certainly never been tempted to enter the VFYW contest. I follow it avidly each week, but mostly to marvel at how people are able to pinpoint such exact locations from such scant clues. Normally, the best I can do is narrow it down to continent. But this week, I knew instantly and without a shadow of a doubt. It was an instant recognition of home. I live on the mainland now, but I was born less than a mile away from where that photo was taken. That is St. John’s harbour. That is Newfoundland’s characteristic rain, drizzle, and fog. That is the Bowring building in the corner. That is a view from the Murray Premises.

I don’t expect to win. Having never entered before, I wouldn’t win any kind of tiebreaker, and if the location was obvious to me, it must be obvious to others. But when I went to verify the location, I saw that Google street view doesn’t actually have data for the corner of Harbour Drive and Becks Cove. So maybe it will be a tough one for Dishheads without local knowledge? Probably not. But just in case, I’ve attached from the Murray Premises website that shows the scene from the opposite side of the harbour in much nicer weather. It seems like the picture has been taken from the third floor, and I’m guessing the most easterly window.

So very close. The following reader zeroes in on the correct third-floor room:

This is the Murray Premises Hotel, located on the town’s harbor in the block created by Harbour Drive, Beck’s Cove, Water Street, and Bishop’s Cove. If my estimation of the sight lines is correct, it’s taken from the bedroom of suite 301, or from this picture, the window furthest to the right and the lower one poking out from the roof. This picture shows the hotel with the the little red-roofed building (a paint shop, apparently) and the little overpass parking exit which are visible from the picture.

The first thing I noticed was that the car in the foreground seemed American-ish with an American-style license plate. I’ve never been to Canada, but I guess they use them there, too? I suspected that this placed the photo in British Columbia, Alaska, Washington, or Eastern Canada. I also saw the word “lock” on the window lock, so that confirmed some suspicion.

Next, I tried to identify the ships. The red one’s name is visible, but I couldn’t make out anything, really. I tried looking up ship prefixes, but none seemed to match what I was guessing. In doing this, though, I found Canadian Coast Guard ships that were painted in similar patterns. I have no reason to think this ship is a coast guard ship, but in looking through the CCG pictures, I found a link to St. John’s. This link provided another to a cool little ship-tracking site, so I looked through and didn’t find anything in St. John’s with a similarly-shaped name or a similar-looking boat. Silly me, I didn’t think about the fact that ships move, so I played on that site looking at other places in Eastern Canada.

At one point, though, I just thought, “No, St. John’s looked right.” So I went back and started looking at Panoramio pictures and street views, and of course, after about five minutes I saw the overpass. The area in front of the hotel seems to be under construction, and there was no street view. But right after the street view jumped past it, I turned it around and there was the overpass, street lights and all. From there, I just found the hotel name on the map, followed it to the website, looked at pictures to confirm, etc. And, you know, e-mailed the hotel to find out the room number. The woman who replied, Kim, was surprisingly nice given the oddity of my request.

An even more ambitious effort – and this week’s winner, given the reader’s long track record without yet clinching the prize:

The key to solving this week’s VFYW contest (in under five minutes) was identifying the red vessel in the background of the photo. Turns out there aren’t too many red vessels with ALEX as part of their name. The ALEX GORDON is an “anchor handling vessel”, built in 1975 and its most recent known port visit, according to this site, was St. John’s, Newfoundland. Some quick googling confirmed this was the sight of the photo and the hotel from which the photo was taken is the Murray Premises.

I figured quite a large number of people would also quickly identify the photo location so I thought about what kind of “added value” I could bring to my contest entry. It suddenly occurred to me, and I’m probably letting the cat out of the bag for future VFYW contests revealing this, that I could utilize a hobbyof mine – geocaching – to help identify the room number and get pictures at the location. I looked up the closest geocache to Murray Premises and emailed the owners of the geocache and asked them if they could help me out. And did they ever! “The Boundary Hunters” went down to hotel and took several photos for me. They identified the room from which the VFYW photo was taken as room 301. Unfortunately that room was occupied but they did their best to recreate the photo and were able to access the window one up and one over. The ALEX GORDON is still docked at the same location and the weather has much improved from the time when the contest photo was taken.

Details from the submitter:

This one was taken this morning as the fog was lifting on St John’s Harbour. I took it from our room in the Murray Premises, a small hotel at 5 Beck’s Cove between Water Street and Harbour Drive in what was once a mercantile warehouse built in 1846 and where my husband and I are enjoying a romantic weekend getaway. It’s room 301 … is that specific enough?

(Archive)

The View From Your Window Contest

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 contest@andrewsullivan.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

The View From Your Window

Norman, Oklahoma, 1.30 pm

The View From Your Window

Islamorada, Florida Keys, 12.30 pm

The View From Your Window

Eagan, Minnesota, 7 am

The View From Your Window

Yankton, South Dakota, 9.33 am

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #151

A reader writes:

This appears to be the view of Pico from Faial, both central islands in the Azores. While not exactly tropical, the climate is warm enough to sustain the odd palm tree. I believe you can see the town of Horta smack in the middle of the snapshot.

Another:

Long-time follower, first time responding! I believe this picture was taken from somewhere on the eastern side of the Azorean island Faial. The mountain in the background looks to be Mount Pico, on the nearby island of Pico. I’m sure someone else will be much more exact, but my best guess is that it was taken somewhere on the outskirts of the city of Horta, possibly Conceição?

Since I can’t offer too much more detail, let me add a personal anecdote about Faial. My family is originally from mainland Portugal and my grandfather originally applied for a visa to come to the US in 1947, but didn’t get one until 1960. It took a series of volcanic eruptions in 1957/58 on the western side of Faial to finally open the door for my family and thousands of others to enter the US. The eruptions led to Congress passing the Azorean Refugee Act of 1958 (co-sponsored by then Senator John F. Kennedy), which greatly increased the amount of visas provided to Portuguese, both from the Azores and the mainland.

Another:

This looks like it might be Nevis in the distance, the island that is very close to St. Kitts. The country is St. Kitts Nevis, Nevis is so-called because Columbus thought that the peak was covered in snow, or nieves in Spanish, but it was just clouds. There are no snow capped islands in the West Indies. Nevis is just south of St. Kitts, which was named by Columbus for his patron saint.

Another:

It could be any tropical, volcanic region in the world, so most likely Central America or Southeast Asia. With that in mind, I’m guessing that this was taken from the port town of Balingoan on the north coast of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, looking across to Camiguin Island which is famous for its volcanoes.

Another:

Well, this week’s contest was too easy, as Anak Krakatoa Island is the subject of the photo. (Even were it not for the profile of the famous volcano, the red tile/metal roofs in the tropical paradise setting clearly suggest an Indonesia-like locale.) The photographer has to be a tourist visiting Anak Krakatoa (Child of Krakatoa), with accommodation on one of the three islands that make up the remnants of the original Krakatoa island obliterated in 1883.

Another:

Well, we’re looking at a volcano in the tropics, sitting near a body of water. Could be a lot of different places (it quite reminds me of my recent trip to Arenal volcano in Costa Rica), but searching Indonesia alone would take hours, I’m going to make an educated guess that we’re looking at Mayon Volcano in the Philippines, known for its majestic symmetry. It sits on a body of water, the Albay Gulf, and there’s the little town of Manito right across the gulf from Mayon, so that’s what I’m guessing. (Watch, the volcano will probably turn out to be Concepcion in Nicaragua, or something in Indonesia and I’ll be off by thousands of miles.)

Another:

Costa Rica? Overlooking the Tenorio volcano, from Tilaran, or somewhere close? My husband and I went to Costa for our honeymoon in January and I’ve been dying to go back and this has the look, from the palms, architecture, terrain. Might be another volcano, but definitely Central America.

Another:

I spent the winter holiday cruising down the Pacific coast and stopped in both Guatemala and Nicaragua. Volcanoes in both places, but I’m guessing Guatemala. Is that Lake Atitlan in the foreground? I don’t expect I’ll ever win the book – I’m just not computer savvy enough to do the calculations and draw the intersecting vector lines and give GPS data … but fuck it, let’s say this is taken from the top of the chicken coop on the farm of Pedro Zacapa on the outskirts of Santa Catarina Palopo, Guatemala.

Another:

Back in the 1980s, when I lived in Guatemala, Panajachel on Lake Atitlan was one of the places I’d go for a respite. At that time there were few tourists and even on Peace Corps wages I could stay in a decent hotel. I believed and still believe that it is one of the most beautiful places on earth. And the people were as beautiful as the land. Many of the villages on the lake were considered too dangerous to visit, but I would go anyway. Stupid youth. There was a Catholic mission in one village that was very welcoming. I had tremendous respect for the work of these people – nuns, priests, and others – doing such good work in a troubled place. I would visit the orphanage to get my hug quota fulfilled. The only negative was that many were from Minnesota and I had to withstand a barrage of Iowa jokes whenever I stopped by.

Another gets the right country:

I have never dared to respond to the VFYW contest before but the most recent one just screams Central America to me, and since I lived for a year and a half in Nicaragua, I’m going to go with that. The mix of vegetation, the layout of the house, the rusty corrugated tin roof, and the volcano on the lake is the spitting image of Mombotombo. The bricks in the foreground even look like the type made by all the towns along the Highway from Managua to Leon. I’m getting some serious nostalgia just typing this. So I’m going to take a guess based on the towns around Lake Managua and say this was taken outside either La Esperanza or Nagarote. Let’s just go with Nagarote. Thanks for the blast from the past!

Another nails the exact location:

A Google image search using the phrase “volcano island” quickly serves up a variety of candidates, including Volcan Concepcion, on the island Ometepe, in Nicaragua, with a cone-like shape similar to the mountain in the contest photo. A subsequent search on “Ometepe” turned up photos so strikingly similar to the contest photo that they must have been taken from the same window. It didn’t take long to find the location by looking at Ometepe accommodations on Tripadvisor. The location is the Finca Magdalena guest house, near the town of Balgue, on the island of Ometepe, in Lake Nicaragua, Nicaragua.

Another:

On Google maps, my wife and I started moving north along the Venezuelan coastline in search of islands just off the mainland. Eventually we reach Central America, and Nicaragua. At this point one might notice a rather large lake set in Nicaragua named Lake Nicaragua, and set in the middle of that lake is … a volcanic island called Isla Ometepe. In the lake. Like a motherf*cking Bond villian lair. It’s the coolest thing ever and I never knew it existed and it’s shit like this that keeps me doing this contest every week.

Another focuses on the hostel:

I am afraid this one will generate a lot of correct results, based on the fact that I found it rather quickly (20 minutes). Clearly Caribbean landscape, but no island volcanoes seem to match the geography. I found some links to Costa Rica volcanoes and expanded my search to include Central America, which immediately produced several photos almost identical to this weeks view, all with the same outbuildings and varying degrees of cloud cover and snow on Volcán Concepción. Anyway, I believe the photo was taken from the upper floor of the Finca Magdalena Hostel on Isla de Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua. Judging by the angle and the window frame in the photo, I am pretty sure it was take through the small side window circled:

Another:

I have never been there, but my Brooklyn-dwelling daughter traveled there last year, visiting a friend and climbing the other volcano, Maderas, which is dormant. She reported spectacular wildlife and loved hiking up through the rainforest; it is a nature preserve and a UNESCO Biosphere preserve.

Another:

This place is fantastic if you like troops of howler monkey. As a monkey enthusiast myself this locale was great for sneaking into the woods up the hill and grabbing a quick pic of the monkeys. We stayed here one night on our way around the island back in 2010, since we’d heard they’d had this great fried mango food like Mango French Fries! The whooping and screeches of the monkeys did not thrill most residents during the night, but boy was I wooed by their subtle songs. Just Beautiful! It had a great little restaurant style bed and breakfast feel, and there was a fantastically cute pet raccoon tied to tree. He did little tricks for food throughout the meals, although he didn’t seem too happy about the leash. Not sure how they got him – are raccoon’s common pets in “Nici”? I need get one of these!

But back to the monkeys! Howler monkeys can be heard from over three miles away. Amazing! We went all around the island listening for them. I felt like Jane Goodall or something finding these monkeys! HUZAAAAHHH!!! There they were! They mostly enjoyed the slopes of the volcano, which – woooweee – are a little steep for my legs. I practically fell right off of Conception. I’m not great at sketching but tried my hand at it – getting sooo much better at anatomical sketches. Probably should write my own book on this stuff.

Another:

When I saw this week’s VFYW, I nearly had a heart attack. Finally, a VFYW that I’d seen with my own eyes! This is the Finca Magdalena, a rustic farmhouse inn on an organic coffee farm, where I stayed with my husband and our three-year-old daughter, Isabel, several years ago. The Finca was our last destination on our trip to Nica. The ride in was rather complicated, hopping from ferry to bus to motorbike, but let me tell you, it was worth it. My husband and I loved the simplicity of the food, the staff, and most of all, the COFFEE! Nothing like some caffeine to get you up those steep Nica hikes! We ditched some clothes just to leave room in our suitcases to bring home as much coffee as possible.

The kind staff even introduced our Isabel to their “mapachito”, the cutest little raccoon they keep tied to a nearby tree. He was friendly as ever. Needless to say, this was the highlight of Isabel’s trip, and she played with him constantly. Talk about a free babysitter ;)

Another:

During a winter break in law school, I traveled to Nicaragua with one of my best friends. As I’m sure most tourists would be, we were intrigued by the existence of a volcano in the middle of a lake. We set aside a couple of days of our whirlwind tour of the country to travel to Isla de Ometepe. On our only full day on the island, we spent an exhausting eight hours scaling the muddy slopes of Volcan Concepcion. We brought our cameras for what we believed would be the incredible views on top. Unfortunately, we had not thought through the implications of the term “cloud forest.” As the moniker would suggest, the top of Concepcion is entirely banked in by clouds and thick mist at almost all times (as the entry photo depicts). Despite having no views, the slopes were still a wonderfully dense jungle of packed vegetation, tangled tree limbs, and howling monkeys.

Another:

I knew this one immediately, not because I’d been there but because growing up we constantly had Ometepe coffee around the house. The distinctive shape of the volcano was printed on the coffee bags.

About a third of the roughly 150 entries correctly identified Ometepe, and seven of those were from readers who have identified difficult views in the past without winning (“difficult” being defined as a view in which only 10 or fewer readers correctly answer it). To break that tie, the reader among the seven who has participated in the most contests (11) is the winner this week:

This week’s view is from the top (mansard) floor of the Finca Magdalena Hostel. It is located on Ometepe Island, which rises out of Lake Nicaragua. Two volcanoes dominate the island: Concepcion, seen in the original view, is the taller, more symmetric one; and Maderas is the flatter one on the right at the link above. The hostel is on its northern slope. I knew this had to be in the Americas, since there is a cactus in the foreground, on the roof (all cacti but one are native to the Americas). I tried ‘volcano island Central America’ as a search phrase and Ometepe was the top result. I found this almost identical image on Panoramio and then the building it was taken from. (The window in question is the small one on the right.)

One more view: