Arch of Bells

Picture of the Arch of Bells found on the Vatican Map website. Not much else could be found anywhere else.

Bronze Doors

After a long absence, picking this back up again.

I found a good option on Flickr to share pictures of other users of Flickr of one subject called "Galleries". Most pictures on Flickr have the option to ADD TO GALLERY on them. You can add up to 18 pictures on one gallery on your own account and save them that way.

Here's the bronze doors gallery link

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38193646@N07/galleries/72157622768309429/

Exploring Vatican City

Yesterday I found this great map of the Vatican on one of the official sites for Vatican City. What's great is it is numbered and linked to information about each point of interest and so I decided the best way to be sure I checked all of those out was to go to each place starting with map point 1 and to the end with map point 64.

Some places I might just write a blurp stating what the place is and a link about it, but most places I want to post media like video and pictures about the artwork, which I want to really look at and admire throughout the place. I'll make videos myself or I'll post links to sites with pictures and videos. I found a site today that has actual virtual tours of some of the more historical buildings, so I'll post those links too.

I'm starting with point 1 on the map: The Five Bronze Doors the post after the next one.

Vatican City

Vatican City

Population: 826

Capital: Vatican City

Government: Ecclesiastical
Language: Italian

The next smallest country on the list is Vatican City, probably the only country where you have to leave and move to another once your job ends. It's a city, it's a capital, a country and on top of all of that it holds some of the finest pieces of art known to mankind. It's population is mostly made up of employees, aka, clergy and clergymen and currently 43 laypersons. It's the home of Pope, burial ground of the apostle, Peter and the unwilling background for the feature film Angels & Demons, starring Tom Hanks, written by Dan Brown. For everything you'd want to know factual and otherwise about the city here is it's wiki page.

Below is a map of the entire city, which to me looks more like a college campus then a country.

I spent the day visiting using Google Earth. It's really the most useful tool there is for virtual travel via the Internet. It works better with cable or DSL but I've had it work on dial up too. When it began it was just satellite shots that you could zoom in on and find anything visible from space. Now, however, a new feature was added where users of Panoromia can put pinpoint links to pictures of the area you are zooming in on that they took and I have to say most pictures offered are really very impressive and fun to look at.

Viewing Vatican City this way, I started off with zooming and roaming through the gardens and making my way up to St. Peter's. I had to stop there for today because the pictures lead me to other interesting links and gave me an idea on how I would like to look at the whole city, which I am posting next.

Pitcairn Island - The People of and Day to Day Survival

Long before the October 2004 trials and even now and I am sure long after, Pitcairn Island has had a large fan base of travelers, some of which consider the Pitcairn the "Holy Grail" of all travelers and genologists, some related to the islanders, who want to know two main questions: Who are the people/decendents of muntineers who are left on Pitcairn Island. AND. What is their life like on the island today?

Above is a picture of a daily event. It's a picture of a delivery haul in the foredeck of one of the long boats being carried back to the island. Above it some laundry has been hung to catch the sea breeze as the boat rides back causing one to wonder, is this how they get all their clothes dry?

While I am not sure as to the answer to that question, from all I found on the web, I do know that they do have electricity on the island, be it only a couple hours a day. They have houses and chores of cooking and cleaning where instead of hotels, travelers arrange deals with people on the island for room and board in exchange for chores and cooking. They have their own source of food that grows on the island, breadfruit of course being the most popular, which apparently they use some sort of guns to shoot them down from the trees. They do not have cars, but they have small carts of some sort to drive around in. They have no roads, but they do have dirt pathways. They have no currency of their own like other countries, but they do have a trade and a living of entertaining and selling handcrafted goods to passing tourist dropped off by various cruise lines.

Some of the most interesting links I found to get further information and further ideas via pictures of what life is like on Pitcairn came from these sites:

Photo's by Andrew Christian (a descendant of Fletcher Christian).
Pitcairn's Photo Album (made by fans and islanders)
Pitcairn's Study Center

Pitcairn Islands on Youtube

Here's the link to my playlist page where a playlist of the videos I found on Pitcairn Islands is set up.

Pitcairn Islands - Dark Legacy

If they were to make a sequel to The Bounty, I am thinking the plot would have to go along the lines of Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning movie Unforgiven. Same kind of situation. A group of women who's main occupation and purpose is sex. A population of men who at one point one or several begin to abuse said women and sides get drawn, men protecting other men by either joining in or turning a blind eye to what is happening and women left with a choice of being defenseless or protecting themselves and one another. Pretty much sums up what happened to the so-called paradise the ending of The Bounty would have you fantasizing it to be.

If a movie were made, one that was true to the real life happenings of the people on Pitcairn Island from the day they landed upon the fertile volcanic rock until now, I'm thinking it also could win an Oscar and in my opinion be a far more shocking and thought provoking tale than Unforgiven ever could have inspired to be.

If you take the time to read the main wiki page on Mutiny of The Bounty, as I did, you will see what took place was a very historic and unusual (in my opinion) battle of the sexes, Women vs. Men and in the end you would see the tally was women 9, men 1. Woman wins. Like Unforgiven you would wonder what extremes the women found themselves having to go to in order to protect themselves. It even has me wondering if the mystery behind Fletcher Christian's death could have very well been hidden by the islanders because the fact was he wasn't killed by the men or natural causes or suicide and he didn't leave the island and go back to England, but actually killed by one or several women instead.

Though the women did have their victory, which by all means should have lasted, especially after John Adams, the only man left, repented and found God, years later another battle began and unlike the battle past, which was probably fought with the only weapons women would have on an isolated island in the late 1700's early 1800's, this one was fought via police officers, lawyers, judges and video links.

Instead of two sides, as it was in the past, 3 sides emerged from this modern battle, the men, the women, and Great Britain's legislature and unlike the past that went on hidden from the world's view, this one, unhidden, had the world taking sides. There were those that were on the side of the men, claiming that they were either falsely accused and or living the ways of a culture not understood by Britain's modern day culture, a culture that had different society rules and had lived in these ways for years. There were those who took sides with the women along with author's/journalists such as Kathy Marks and Dea Birkett, claiming in any other country the men would be seen as pedophiles and rapist and under harsh penalty, where these men seem to have the power of their isolation to get away with more and suffer less penalty and finally, you have those who did not necessarily take Great Britain's side, but actually blamed the legislation instead for unjustly and even coercing and causing the trials to happen and the convictions to take place.

Which ever side you pick in October of 2004 the trials took place, verdicts were handed out and the battle between men and women on Pitcairn Island very much came out to the favor of the women again.

Of all the information on this I looked at including watching a two hour long lecture given by Kathy Marks I found on Truveo, an article by Dea Birkett, writer of Serpent in Paradise, bantered comments made by supporters of the island and haters of he island on almost every YouTube video of the island there is, this one obscure report, I felt was not only the most fair, but most objective account of what happened before and during those trials October 2004.

Pitcairn Islands - The Bounty (1982)

Today I decided to use my Netflicks "Watch Instantly" account to watch the 1984 film about the Pitcairn Island Muntineer lineage The Bounty. Actually I was really glad this one was on the watch instantly list as it's the one I preferred to see since it is suppose to be the more accurate and realistic account of the others and very realistic it was, right down to the topless island girls. The film has a PG rating regardless and I wondered how they got away with that until I read Roger Ebert's review on the flick and he thought the PG rating borrowed the same rule that National Geographic uses, which is anything below the equator doesn't really count as nudity, so there ya go.

Above Anthony Hopkins stars as Lieutenant William Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian. As always Anthony Hopkins does an amazing job in his role as does Mel Gibson and I came away not only feeling as if I knew these two men better, but also understood both their sides in this famouse muntiny and since thats exactly what I was looking for in this version of the story, I'm glad to say, its exactly what I got.

The above still, taken from the first act of the movie, shows Bligh on his way to court to answer for any wrongs he did in losing his ship. It's the vehical the writer of the film uses to tell the story for the entire movie, Bligh answering to the court and flashbacks showing just what happened and I think it works really well.

The film was directed by Roger Donaldson, a pretty new New Zealand director at the time and I think he does an excellent job. The film's music is done by Vangelis, who did the famous score for Chariot's of Fire and it really sets the mood and tone well.

My take, Lieutenant Bligh was a man who was trying to succeed in his job and as he puts it in the movie, "make a name for himself" before he grows too old to do so. Apparently he had not had much luck with this in the past and so he hopes to do so in heading The Bounty on a journey to Tahiti in an effort to obtain their breadfruit plants. The film portrays Fletcher Christian as apparently a friend of Lieutenant Blighs, a younger man then he, who had been on journey's before with Bligh and who Bligh asks to join him on this one. It all starts out very smoothly until Bligh makes the mistake of taking them on a dangerous course, a course he hopes to prove himself, but fails miserably and his right hand guy, John Fryer, (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) turns on him. He then demotes Fryer and promotes Fletcher. Unlike the other men, Fletcher does not seem interested in obtaining promotions or any kind of power. It almost seems as if the job was put upon him and he seems a little put off by it, but is taking and doing his best regardless.

I wanted to understand this part of the muntiny story in particular because of all the information I found on the net about this story, I could not find a really detailed answer as to why Fletcher turned on Captain Bligh and I knew this movie would answer that for me.

As to the answer why, despondency about the job he was given was not the only problem Fletcher had to deal with. After spending 30 weeks on a exotic paradise-like island with friendly natives and topless island girls, a place where any man would want to call home and never leave, Bligh notices Fletcher is getting a little too comfortable with the natives, as the rest of his men have and once back aboard The Bounty headed for home, Bligh begins an angry wrath of fury, strict orders and displine in an effort to shake the men out of their loose, irresponsible attitudes that he feels the island impressed upon them during their stay and the pressure proves to be too much for Fletcher to handle. Hence the why and hence the spark the ignited the mutiny fire.

The movie is great and the ending is expected but still very satisfying to watch. As I watched; however, I felt the story ended where another maybe even more interesting one began and I really wished there had been a sequel.

Pitcairn Islands

Pitcairn Islands
Population: 50.
Capital: Adamstown.

Government: British Overseas Territory.

Fame: The home of the descendents of the Bounty mutineers and the subject of 4 Hollywood films.

Language: English and Pitkern.

The Picairn Islands are a group of four volcanic islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. The islands are best known for being the home of the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and Tahitins who accompanied them. This event has been retold in numerous books and films.

The Mutiny in Cinema and Literature

• Mary Russell Mitford wrote a poem 'Christina, the Maid of the South Seas' in 1811.
• Lord Bryron published a poem 'The Island' in 1823
• Sir John Barrow wrote a book The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. in 1831.
• Jules Verne wrote Les revoltes de la Bounty in 1879
• Mark Twain wrote The Great Revolution in Pitcairn in 1903
• Charles Nordhoff and James Normal Hall wrote a trilogy of novels: Muntiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea and Pitcairn's Island around 1932.
• A first movie was made in Austrialia in 1916.
• The second movie version was the Australian film In the Wake of the Bounty in 1933 starring Errol Flynn as Fletcher Christian.
• The next movie was Mutiny on the Bounty which starred Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian and Charles Laughton as William Bligh in 1935 and won the Oscar for Best Picture that year.
• The next movie released was yet another film called Mutiny on the Bounty in 1962 starring Trevor Howard as Bligh and Marlon Brando as Christian and is generally considered the least accurate.
• A fifth film, The Bounty came out in 1984 starring Anthony Hopkins as William Bligh and Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian. This film is generally consdiered the most historically accurate with some of the scenes reenacted directly from William Bligh's own log.

Welcome To Virtualjourneys

This blog was created with the intention of researching and gathering information, pictures, videos, interesting stories and articles about every country in the world, starting in order of population from the least populated country on earth to the most populated country on earth. The purpose of the blog is to "virtually" take a journey around the world without ever leaving home. It's an attempt to visit and learn about the entire world, it's places, people and cultures using the internet as the only resource in doing so.

There are currently 221 countries in the world. My plan is to visit each country via web resources such as google, google earth, flickr, youtube and wiki.