And now for something completely different.
– Monty Python
In addition to our story, Robie and I hope to keep you amused and engaged through entertaining posts like this version of Where are you now?
Sometime in the mid-1990s, Condé Nast Traveler magazine began imitating Playboy by publishing centerfold pictures that were pretty enough to hang on your bedroom wall. The photos showed otherworldly natural landscapes, jaw dropping manmade architecture, distant shores, far off scenes, vistas that gave testament to the wonders of our planet. And the amazing pictures came with a paragraph or two of tantalizing tidbits about the place in the photograph.
Each month readers were encouraged to send postcards to the magazine naming the place in the picture based on the clues in the paragraph, and from the pile of correct answers, one winner would be drawn to receive a free subscription. Despite the hours – sometimes days – I spent each month poring over encyclopedias, maps and old issues of National Geographic attempting to name the Twelve Apostles off Australia’s southeastern coast, a particular rice paddy in Borneo, the shadow of a tall building spread across sand dunes, I never had the right answer. But I went through a lot of my mom’s stamps. Then like so many fun things of old, the feature died when the internet made it too easy to find the answer.
Robie and I are determined to bring back Where are you now? And our homage to the bygone piece will use personal photos and interesting details about some of the amazing places we’ve seen.
The rules are simple. Read the post then go to the Contact page to send us a guess of the location in the photo. The first correct response wins. Sadly, there are no prizes. Only the satisfaction of knowing that you beat everyone else. At the bottom of the next Where are you now? post we’ll announce the correct answer along with the winner’s name so everyone will know how great you are! And while we can’t stop you from using AI, we trust you know it will only deprive you of the fun of learning something new.
So, without further ado, Reid & Robie present,
Where Are You Now?
You’re standing in a town that sits 4,718 feet above sea level.
Known for its restorative hot springs and, on clear days, stunning views of the country’s iconic symbol, you’ve arrived at this small town of 10,965 inhabitants (based on October 2023 data) on a switchback train traversing steep slopes. After paying a visit to the nearby open-air art museum with a pavilion dedicated to the drawings of Pablo Picasso, you spend the night at a hotel that once hosted John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Following a morning soak in the hot spring water, stroll through the hotel’s lovely greenhouse with its array of tiny plants. Then it’s time to hop aboard a series of cable cars that stop near expertly manicured gardens before you board a boat and cross the crater lake at the southwestern wall of the mountain caldera. When you arrive on the other side of the lake, you and your fellow passengers follow an old roadway through a tall forest walking along a path that was built in the 17th century and used to connect the country’s newly established economic center with its historic and cultural capital.
Tell us, where are you now?
Go to the Contact page, enter your information which should include the name of the town and the country described above.
We’ll announce the answer and the winner in the next Where are you now? post.
Have fun! And good luck!