"Been There" Virtual Travel Quiz? Round #18
See notes at the bottom of the page before posting an entry
Previous winners:
Round #1 won by MCD and cvc
Submitted by AlanS. Photo of the Round Tower at Windsor Castle, Berkshire, UK. First photo shows Union Jack, second is the Royal Standard, indicating the Queen is on-site. Third photo is the chapel at Eton College, where Prince Harry and Prince William attended high school.
Round #2 (A) won by Smiling Sam
Submitted by JohnS. Photo of tomb of the Mughal Emperor Humayun in Delhi, India. The tomb was commissioned by his first wife and chief consort, Empress Bega Begum in 1569-70.
Round #2 (B) won by BKMD and travel maven
Submitted by Smiling Sam. Photo of the what is variously termed the Royal Barge or Gangaur boat, a sort of water taxi, that was used to transport James Bond across man-made (1362) Lake Pichola to the "Floating Palace" or “Taj Lake Palace,” in Udaipur City, Rajasthan, India in the 1983 movie “Octopussy” starring Roger Moore and produced by Robert Broccoli (no proven connection to the vegetable.)
Round #3 won by travel maven
Submitted by BKMD. Photo of the Dohány Street Synagogue located in Budapest, Hungary. Benefactors- Tony Curtis and Helena Rubenstein.
Round #4 won by Smiling Sam
Submitted by travel maven. It is the Chapel on Klimsenhorn, Mt. Pilatus, Switzerland, just outside Lucerne with nearby (Celtic?) cross. Once visited by Richard Wagner and Queen Victoria.
Round #5 won by Smiling Sam (we need to cut his internet feed!)
Submitted by Claudia Sails. Lions Monument in Lucerne Switzerland commemorating the Swiss guards killed in the French Revolution.
Round #6 won by BKMD
Submitted by cvc The high altar in St. John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Malta. cvc took the picture while on a Tauck's small ship cruise of the coast of Italy, making several stops in Sicily and then finished in Malta.
Round #7 won by JohnS
Submitted by Sandman. Anshun Bridge in Chengdu China. Chengdu is the home of the Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Best of China 2013 tour.
Round #8 won by Sandman, bonus answer by travel maven
Submitted by JohnS. The village of Roussillion situated in the Luberon in Provance France in the heart of one of the biggest ochre deposits in the world. Roussillon is famous for its magnificent red cliffs and ochre quarries. The pictures were taken during our Tauck Savoring France cruise on the Rhone in May 2018.
Round #9 won by JohnS
Submitted by Smiling Sam. In the centre of the Plaza de España of Madrid is one of the most important monuments of Miguel de Cervantes of the City. The monument to Cervantes, who died on the 23rd of April 1616, was commissioned by King Alfonso XIII in 1915, on the 300th anniversary of the publication of the second part of Don Quixote. The main body of the fountain was erected in the 1920’s, but the full monument was not completed until the 1960’s, when the sculptures of Aldonza and Dulcinea were added on the side. This impressive monument stands behind a rectangular pool. The figures of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza stand on the central pedestal inviting passers-by to gaze at them amid the bustling life of the city.
Round #10 won by Sandman
Submitted by BKMD. Bathroom humor- Super Toilet controller, Waldorf Astoria Bejing; Odyssey in China.
Round #11 won by your's truly. 
Submitted by British. Rwanda, sights somewhere along the road from Kigali to Ruhengeri or the park to see the Mountain Gorillas on K&T+ R.
Round #12 won by Derek
Submitted by Smiling Sam. It is the Presidential Palace in Hanoi, built by the French in the early 1900s to house the Governor General of French Indochina. When the Vietnamese took power, Ho Chi Minh refused to live in the palace. He built what is known as his Stilt House on the same grounds to live in. He would only host dignitaries in the Palace. As Derek says it is used for foreign dignitaries. Seen on the Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand tour.
Round #13 won by Smiling Sam with assist from Moi
Submitted by Derek. View of the marshy Okavango Delta from the lobby/dining area of the Belmond Eagle Island Lodge (camp), in Botswana. The Fish-Eagle Bar is in the distance on the right. Zambia, South Africa, Botswana tour.
Round #14 won by JohnS
Submitted by Smiling Sam. Wieliczka Salt Mine in Wieliczka Poland, Southwest of Krakow. Last Supper carved in Salt. Berlin, Danube, and Krakow river cruise.
Round #15 No winner (AlanS identified the country)
Submitted by JohnS. Photo of a street ear cleaner, Delhi, India taken on the Northern India and Nepal trip.
Round #16 won by yours truly.
Submitted by BKMD. Patagonia tour. Photo of a soaring Adean Condor taken during a rather strenuous hike, arranged by Singular Patagonia Hotel, from a hill overlooking Lago Sofia a few miles outside of (nw of) Puerto Bories, Chile.
Round #17 won by the gipper (I'll stay quiet for awhile)
Submitted by Smiling Sam. Robin Tauck is featured with a group of 10-12 friends and other tour members for the group photo in front of the Hagia Sophia Museum in Istanbul during the (former) Greece and Turkey small ship cruise (now called Treasures of the Aegean). While it still visits Kusadasi Turkey and the ruins and famous library at Ephesus, it no longer goes to Istanbul or Bodrum, Turkey. What a shame!
New players , please go to any of the announcements for Rounds #1 - #4 to see the rules.
Note: due to forum limits on post size I will eventually need to start with a clean (no prior results) announcement.
TIME FOR SOMEONE NEW TO ENTER! We do have a (loosely enforced) Rule #6. Hopefully those of us who have been submitting so far will take a break from entering (and guessing, too ??). There will be more opportunities ahead. Me, I'm going out to work in the yard- Ugh!
Round #18 is now open for a submission- submit as a reply to this thread. Ready, Set, Go!!
Comments
What is this a picture of? Also, what City and Country.
For extra credit: What is the meaning of the red paint located under the sphere?
I know this but based on AlanS's recommendation I will not say until there are at least a few guesses. I did not think there is a Tauck tour to this area.
Yes, the pic was taken on a Tauck Tour, or at least there was a Tour to this place 4 years ago.
I also know this but based on AlanS “suggestion” I will not participate. JohnS - I believe there is a tour to this area.
After further research I realize there is a tour to this area.
I learned from this series of challenges that there are a number of areas I didn't know Tauck goes to, only because I don't do cruise tours, so don't pay attention to those.
I know but I cheated!
This is the first time, honest! 
Is anyone else cheating? Fess up! I guess I need to re-think the rules, hmmm. If anyone knows how I cheated, please PM me with suggestions how to handle this in the future.
Well, I know it's not by the file name, since that's changed on import; and I know it's not by looking at the metadata, as that's stripped on import, or is it?!
I tried googling various permutations of obelisk with a number of modifiers, but no luck.
AlanS, is being resourceful the same as cheating? I hope not, since in my opinion that is one of the fundamentals of doing research. I will admit that I have been resourceful in answering some of these.
I have used nothing but Google and list of Tauck tours. If you guys are somehow extracting information from the post that provides stuff like descriptive file names that point to the location then yes that is cheating, just like looking at the teachers answer sheet is cheating, not resourceful.
Here is the Google search I used, Cities with obelisks through brain memorials, and then put the results on Image mode. I found a picture in those results that provided the answer. The tour that I used for this challenge was the Grand European cruise which includes a visit to Bucharest. I have no idea if that is the tour that travel maven took.
Sam - what does "through brain memorials" mean? Are you saying that sphere is supposed to be a brain? Don't know how got that. While the exterior shape is consistent, the rest of it isn't. Maybe being a doc, having held a brain in my hands in gross anatomy lab, makes it harder for me to be that abstract.
When photos are uploaded the resolution downsizes and the file name is stripped. There is nothing to my knowledge that can be figured out from the photo data. Some of the resources I am referring too are Google, Bing, Wikipedia etc.
Well I do know that you can use Google Images to help with your research by doing a simple copy and paste of the image posted, but should you? I think that is the easy way out. I think it is more fun and challenging to try to come up with the response by using clues , which you can then do some research on if needed or do a search on certain criteria like Smiling Sam did. Unless you have physically seen the image on a particular tour, it could be very difficult to come up with the answer without some sort of research. I personally have not resorted to Google Images with my guesses.
Smiling Sam: "Grand European Cruise" is not the cruise I went on, however, you got the City correct, so that is a clue.
BKMD - Yes that is what I meant. I try all sorts of combinations like you said that you did and then look at the results. I just got brain because using sphere got me nowhere so I tried using other things to see if the results changed. I used obelisks, I used columns, I used marble columns, ... I also tried statues, ..., memorials. I went through lots of perturbations and using brain is what was successful. I'm not a doctor so thinking that it looked like a brain to me made sense.
OK. BTW, I was unaware that you could upload images into google search. This forum has been very educational lately.
I see a lot of hints, but did anyone say, “Memorial of Rebirth”, Bucharest Romania, and someone threw a can of red paint at it that authorities never removed?
The only solution I came up with by actually seeing the same thing was the Lions Monument challenge. I have, as probably most people do, the same picture that was posted. For the Church on Mt. Pilatus challenge it was similar to this challenge - lots of Google search combinations, put the results in Image mode and look for a matching picture. Even though I'd been to Mt. Pilatus I never saw the church that was posted in that challenge because of cloud cover.
Was this on the Budapest to the Black Sea cruise? While researching the picture, my wife and I decided this might be a tour we are interested in for 2021.
JohnS - Are you using Image matching portions of the tools you describe? If not, then what were the specific methods within those tools you used to solve this challenge. Perhaps the solution should require the specific method that led to the solution.
Is this or something similar the method being used to solve the challenges? First extract a copy of the picture from the post that you can feed to Google Image as follows:
I just sent a PM to Sam, JohnS, BKMD, and travel maven (I hope all at once). Please reply if each of you received it. If you didn't I'll try to resend.
AlanS - I got your PM and replied to it.
FYI - I just tried the method above and it produced a solution in about 1 minute vs the hours spent going through a bunch of Google searches.
John S. It was taken on the Budapest to the Black Sea River Cruise. This was an amazing trip, you will need to do this cruise once everything gets back to some sort of normal. I have always loved visiting Eastern Europe.
Sealord: Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner. You got the correct answer. “Memorial of Rebirth”, Bucharest Romania, and someone threw a can of red paint at it that authorities never removed. Our Tour Guide stated that the Red Paint was left to signify blood spilled during the revolution of 1989..
Here is the rest of the story if interested:
Memorial of Rebirth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Memorial of Rebirth (Memorialul Renaşterii in Romanian) is a memorial in Bucharest, Romania that commemorates the struggles and victims of the Romanian Revolution of 1989, which overthrew Communism. The memorial complex was inaugurated in August 2005 in Revolution Square, where Romania's Communist-era dictator, Nicolae Ceauşescu, was publicly overthrown in December 1989.
The memorial, designed by Alexandru Ghilduş, features as its centrepiece a 25-metre-high marble pillar reaching up to the sky, upon which a metal "crown" is placed. The pillar is surrounded by a 600 m² plaza covered by marble and granite.
The memorial cost 5.6 million lei (RON 5.6 million, ROL 56 billion, approximately €1.5 million). Its initial name was "Eternal Glory to the Heroes and the Romanian Revolution of December 1989" (Glorie Eternă Eroilor şi Revoluţiei Române din Decembrie 1989). The memorial's name alludes to Romania's rebirth as a nation after the collapse of Communism.
Controversy
Despite a commonly acknowledged need for a memorial commemorating Romania's 1989 revolution, the monument sparked a significant amount of controversy when it was inaugurated in 2005, mainly to do with its design. Many artists stated that the memorial, especially its central pillar, was devoid of any symbolism, being too abstract, and thus didn't adequately represent the suffering and magnitude of the 1989 revolution, which claimed around 1,500 lives.
Others stated that they personally didn't like the aesthetics of the design; the mayor of Bucharest, Adriean Videanu, stated, "It's a question of taste. I personally don't like it. I don't understand its symbolism." There was also controversy because the designer, Ghilduş, was an applied artist, designing objects like chairs and lamps, rather than a sculptor.
The art critic Mihai Oroveanu said, "[Alexandru Ghilduş] doesn't have the qualifications to undertake such a work, since he is a designer, not a sculptor". The Memorial of Rebirth has been described as "a potato skewered on a stake", an "olive on a toothpick", "the potato of the revolution" and "the vector with the crown".
The placement of the memorial was also criticized and the Urbanism Committees of both the 3rd Sector and of Bucharest rejected the design, but their role is officially only as consultants and the memorial was erected anyway.
Vandalism
Owing to its relative unpopularity, the monument is guarded round-the-clock. Despite this, on the night of 12 May 2006, it was vandalized with a stencil graffiti figure representing the fictional revolutionary character "V" on the side facing the National Museum of Art.
In 2012 the monument was defaced a second time with a splash of bright red paint that was delivered just at the bottom of the monument's "potato" by an unknown person. This caused the monument to look as though it is bleeding. The paint is so inaccessibly high that it has remained in place since it was placed there.[1]