Hacktoria: Geolocation 10 - What phone number would you call to be able to take this photo?

Question: What phone number would you call to be able to take this photo (do not include the country prefix in your answer).

Full Image

1.???? First step – zoom and crop and find the location.

2.???? Second step – find the phone number.

I zoomed in on every detail, including quotes on the ground, flag, signpost, and restaurant name.

-?????? I identified the flag as Spanish.

-?????? Based on the building type/condition, walkway type/condition, the people and even the need to have the writings on the walkway, I assumed it likely is an urban centre that hosts a number of tourists.

• So, Madrid is the first choice

-?????? Took note of the Restaurant name down left – the name is probably "Usu Restaurante"

-?????? Signpost is very unclear (after completing this exercise, I realized that Café was actually clear enough, I just didn’t look too close to see it)

-?????? Used GIMP to determine the name of the author of the quote is probably "Jose Eche Anop"…(after completing this exercise, I watched Sofia’s walkthrough and realized the name was actually “José Echegaray”)

-?????? My belief was that, if this quote exists, it is unlikely to be the only quote in the same street. I expected to find more quotes on similar walkways.

- I did a reverse image search on the cropped quote on Yandex and it led me to multiple quotes with similar and different walkways.

- I found similar pictures that had the same lamp/street light design, like the one below. However, I still could not determine where exactly the image was taken, because most of the links to the images no longer had the images and generally had no useful information, such as the place.

-?????? After a few searches for clues from the images, I found a quote with the name Lope de Vega below.

-?????? The walkway is similar to our original image, including the red bricks.

-?????? I clicked on the link and it brought me to the Wikimedia page.

-?????? Interestingly, I did not take the title too seriously. So, I scrolled down to find anything written in English or translated.

- Here, I found “las Huertas” as the name of the street. I put that into Google Map and got suggestions of a longer name “Calle de las Huertas, Madrid, Spain”.

-?????? Finally, time to find the location. Yaahh!!! Decided to use “Usu Restaurante” to search for the actual place on the street, but nothing came up.

-?????? Decided to go the long way. Google street view from the beginning of the street to the end, allowing myself to be guided by building type and colour, quote on the ground and most importantly, Usu restaurante and the other extended roof area beside the restaurant (see below).

-?????? I looked twice, but never saw the restaurant or inscription.

-?????? I went back to the original image and realized that the balcony fence/protector is not demarcated as could be seen in the other buildings beside it. It possibly starts from the first door/window to the last. All along, I was thinking it was demarcated.

-?????? I decided to go again, but this time I paid attention to specific details such as the balcony protector, the pipe in the next building (labelled 2 below) and the architectural difference between the 3 buildings joined together.

-?????? After a short while, Google Maps Street View led me here, somewhere between 23, 20 and 17 C. de las Huertas (calle de las Huertas). Cord - 40.41372421303645, -3.6994441734357295

-?????? A zoom in shows these important details visible in the original image.

Compared with the original

-?????? And it’s a match!!!!!

-?????? More images showing details.

-?????? It’s a wrap finding the location.

-?????? Given the positioning of the camera, the original image was likely taken from this yellow building.

-?????? Yep!!!

-?????? Now, what number to call? A zoom in to the building brought this up. But the number is partly covered.

-?????? A search for international youth hostel la posada de hvertas and multiple Google images of the entrance, signpost and number.

-?????? Same place – number - 914295526

-?????? To make sure the number is the same and most current, decided to check the Booking site

-?????? The Telephone:?+34(91)4295526?|?Fax:?+34(91)4293526

-?????? Answer – 914295526, 914293526

So yes, these are the numbers to call to be able to take similar photos.

After completing this task, I checked out Sofia’s walkthrough, and I learned something new. I did not know Google Maps had a way back image search for the same location until I saw Sofia’s.

Thanks for reading.