VFYW: The Land Of Scuba & Saint Nick

For contest #325, we go tangentially sleuthing.

(This week’s post exceeds the content limit for Substack’s email service, so if you want to ensure that you see the full contest results, just click the headline above, “The Land Of Scuba & Saint Nick.” Also, we just posted an archive page for the Dishcast — see all 70 of our episodes in one place, along with corresponding clips and select transcripts.)

First up, from our Coloradan sleuth in NJ, an update on the window view that keeps on giving:

I want to return again to contest #312 from South Georgia Island. The NYT published a great story this week on the remarkable ecological recovery of the island. It is a hopeful tale of how nature rebounds once you remove human’s influence and let it be.

Our sleuth probably didn’t realize this, but the writer of that NYT piece is Jennifer Kingsley — the same Jennifer who took the photo for contest #312, via our mutual friend Robert (who helped Andrew launch the Daily Dish in 2000). At last, a feel-good overlap between the Dish and the NYT!

Another sleuth is a disgruntled over last week’s view from the High Roller:

I felt it was a let-down because the beagle didn’t do her job to cover up the writing on the sign that would give away the location. “The Meridian” just made it too easy.

Well, the beagle is awake in our new contest view, at the very bottom of this post. But the Meridian sign wasn’t easily seen by many sleuths, including:

My first question is, where is that “Meridian” sign that Giuseppe speaks of? And my second is, how different do these images look on different devices? I keep seeing answers that refer to the text of signs that are merely blurs on my computer or phone.

The sign in question:

Moving on to this week’s view, here’s a first-timer to the contest, writing from Valencia, Spain:

The photo looks like it was taken from the town of Hvar, on the island of Hvar, in Croatia. If so, it’s where I’ve seen some of the most splendid sunsets ever. I’ve celebrated one birthday there and hope to celebrate another. 

Another first-termer:

I think that the photo is from a Mediterranean island, and since I am Greek, I’ll say it’s taken in Greece. If I had to guess which island, the coastline in the background reminds me of Skopelos.

Another newbie, in Minnesota, guesses simply, “Lisbon Coast, Portugal?” Lots of newcomers this week — another:

I am an American-Swiss currently living in Florida (and not yet a paid subscriber). This looks quite a lot like Lugano, in Ticino, Switzerland. I used to take my kids to similar parks in Interlaken, Gumligen, and Ascona.

Yet another:

Vegetation looks warm temperate / Mediterranean. Minarets are visible in the background, so Islam is probably the dominant faith. (I had earlier considered somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere.) I think Lebanon or Syria would be more bombed out than this, or at least in more disrepair. Hence I chose North Africa. Algiers?

More on the Muslim theme from this sleuth:

I saw those two minarets in the distance and thought, “This will be easy; how many mosques can there be with that kind of coastline, right?” So hmm ... a Muslim country, right? I thought of Indonesia, but pretty quickly I learned that their minarets tend to be square, not round.

Your moment of Chini: