Place #3: The Empire Theatre

A final activity of January 16th was going to the Empire Theatre to see Sherlock Holmes.  Alex loves Sherlock Holmes movies, so we decided to go see it in central London, though it's more expensive than in other parts of London.  When I first looked it up in the morning before leaving, I tried to find a movie theater (or cinema, as they call it here) that looked old because I wanted the "old European cinema" experience, so I found the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square.

When we went inside, it was huge and it looked like new.  It was a mix of a classic design with modern screen and lighting.  I later found out that this was the movie theater they used for the Sherlock Holmes premiere here in London, which is not surprising after being there.  It turns out that this is one of the movie theaters they use for premieres, and its location in Leicester Square makes it perfect for that sort of thing.  This is only a block away form the M&M store and the W hotel.  It's an area where there are lots of restaurants and stores as well, so you can call it the "heart" of tourism in London.  It is always insanely crowded at all times of the year and now that they are fixing places here and there for the Olympics, Leicester Square is surrounded by walls that reduce the walking space significantly and make it difficult to move around among all the tourists and people like me that stop every five seconds to take a picture of anything and everything.

The Empire Theatre opened during a time that tourism was almost nonexistent in the 1884.  It was used for musicals and later for ballet before it was bought by MGM.  They demolished it in 1927 and made it into a cinema.  In the early 1960s it was refurbished and in 2009 new screening rooms were built making more like the movie theater that exists today.  For a while in the 1990s they had a light and music show before the movie started that was quite popular.

You can read all about the Empire Theatre's history on Wikipedia if you like random facts and are not planning to write a full-referenced essay on it or you can go to the Empire Cinema's website.

Another interesting fact is that one of the screening rooms sits 1,330 people, it has a stadium-like design and lots of leg room, which I loved!  The are also currently installing the UK's largest movie theater screen, so the Empire Theater is certainly worth visiting if you don't mind paying a couple of extra pounds.

Place #2: The M&M Store

That same day we visited the M&M store for the first time.  A lot of people come visit it but Alex and I have gone to the M&M store in New York and Las Vegas, so we didn't really see the point until this particular day in which we happened to be walking by.  The very first M&M store was opened in New York, Orlando and Las Vegas also have M&M stores.  They are usually huge and the attract a lot of tourists!  This M&M store was the first one in Europe.  It has four floors and its design contains a lot of world known British icons with an M&M take, like the Abbey Road crossing where The Beatles got that famous picture taken.

This store is located in the Swiss Center Building under the W hotel.  There is no way to miss it.  It is very close to Leicester Square.  I'll tell you all about Leicester Square another day.  For now, if you want more info on the M&M store, you can click on this link to read a little article I found about it.

Abbey Road I have not visited yet, so we'll save that story for later as well.

Place #1: Big Ben

This was on Saturday, January 14th.  I had come back from California the day before.  Every time I go visit my parents and California and then return to wherever I live I get this overwhelming feeling of wanting to pack my bags and move back home.  When I lived in Chile it was a lot worse though, because going back to Chile meant going back to work and that was tough! I would be depressed for like two weeks.  This year I was coming back to London which is way cooler, but I had that feeling of "I want my mommy" anyway so to get over it Alex and I decided to go to central London again, and it was worth it!

The first time I went to central London was a few days after I had moved here on September 18th, 2011.  Interestingly enough, September 18th is also Chile's independence day, so I wore a t-shirt with the Chilean flag on my first day in central London.  I didn't go before that because the first two or three days I spent them in Greenwich setting up the apartment (or "flat" as they call it here) and getting my university things in order, but as soon as the weekend was here, we went to see the Big Ben.  Now, for those of you who haven't been here, you may not know that Big Ben is not really that clock tower that you see up there.  Big Ben is the name of the big bell inside of it.

The story goes something like this: in 1834 there was a fire that destroyed the Palace of Westminster so they had to construct a new building for the Houses of Parliament.  This new building incorporated some of the pieces that were not destroyed by the fire, like Westminster Hall, but it also included new designs like the clock tower and the big bell inside of it.  It is believed that when they were trying to come up with a name for the big bell, Sir Benjamin Hall, a large man that was affectionately called Big Ben in the House of Parliament, gave a long speech on the subject.  When he sat down, someone jokingly said: "Why not call him Big Ben and have done with it?"  Everyone laughed and the bell was indeed named Big Ben.  Not long ago I went on a tour in which the tour guide added: "We should be glad his name was not Sir William Hall or Sir Richard Hall."

The first time the bells of the Great Clock of Westminster rang was on May 31st 1859.  It is also said that Astronomer Royal, George Airy determined that the clock had to be incredibly accurate, so "its performance" had to be telegraphed twice a day to the Greenwich Royal Observatory and a record had to be kept to make sure that the clock was never ahead or behind.  If you want more info about Big Ben you can go to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry website.  Most tours here in London will tell you about this though, so if you live here you will hear it a lot but you can find more details in this website.

Anyway, so the clock tower is still commonly known as Big Ben, but I personally call it "The London" because to me there is no icon more representative of this city.  When I was little my dad used to say he would be very emotional the first time he saw Big Ben because he always dreamed about coming to London after studying English at the university and learning all about the UK and its culture.  I didn't really care much about Big Ben or London either way, but the first time I saw it in person, I thought of my dad and how I got to see it before he did which made me unexpectedly emotional.

Now I just love to see it whenever I get a chance because it reminds me of my family, which is why it just made sense to go see it on my first day back in London.  It just made me feel better.  My dad still has not seen it, but he and my mom are coming this summer hopefully, so in the meantime it is still here waiting for them.

Taking pictures

Most of you who know me already know that I have developed an obsession with taking pictures over the years and I guess it is not really something new.  I got my first camera when I was 8 or 9 and it was one of those film cameras that were long and rectangular and that a lot of people had back in the early 90s.  I got it for Christmas from Santa and I attempted to use it that same day.  I had no idea how to use it, of course, so when I put the film in, I took a few pictures and then decided I didn't like the last picture, so I opened the camera and tried to rewind the film like you would a cassette tape.  Needless to say, I ruined all the pictures by exposing the film to the sunlight.

That camera didn't last very long.  I have no idea what happened to it, or if I ever developed any pictures that I took with it, but as my interest in photography grew I began to volunteer as the picture-taker whenever we took a family vacation.  Now, I say "picture-taker" and not "photographer" because I was really no photographer.  I was just a girl borrowing her parents' point-and-shoot camera that, other than a flash, had no special features of any kind.

I enjoyed taking pictures, though.  I was not particularly good and the quality of the camera certainly did not help, but it was okay.  I just liked to try to take a good picture at least.  See, in my mind sometimes I just see places and moments that I feel the need to capture so I can share them with others.  Of course I like it when people tell me they like a picture I took, who wouldn't!  But that is not why I took pictures then and is not why I do it now.  I do it to remember, and I do it to share.

This became increasingly easy with the use of digital cameras, of course.  I got my first digital camera for my birthday in 2004.  Again, it was just a point-and-shoot camera with something like 4 megapixels, but it did the trick.  More importantly, at that point I was studying Film and TV production so I had learned a bit about framing, which made a big difference.

Then, Alex got a Canon PowerShot that I began using all the time. It had a better zoom and all kinds of manual modes that I never really used, but the quality of the camera was way superior to anything I had ever had.  That's when it started!  I loved that camera and I took it everywhere with me.  It was around that time that I graduated college in California and moved back to Chile.  Also around that time Facebook became popular in Chile so I saw real potential in posting pictures up on Facebook so my family and friends in the US and Chile would be able to see them.  I would like to tell you that I learned to take wonderful pictures using all kinds of manual settings but I didn't.  Like I said, to me it's never been about that.  I like to take pictures, but learning all the little details just suck the fun out of it for me. 

For Christmas in 2011 Alex gave me my current camera, which is also a Canon and it's better than the last camera.  I still didn't know how to use most of the settings, but it got my Pic a Day project started.  My New Year's resolution in 2011 was to take at least one picture every day of the year and post it on Facebook.  It worked for quite a while until I got tired of taking pointless pictures every single day and just started taking pictures when I had something to photograph.  Interestingly enough, I still ended up taking 4 or more pictures every week. If you want to see my Pic a Day album you can access it HERE and I think you should be able to see it regardless of whether we are friends on Facebook or not...

Anyway, there are certainly better photographers than me but when I look at that album I know that I'm doing what I enjoy the most, which is capturing a moment or a place and sharing it.  I probably will not make money out of it, but at least I'll always enjoy it.  It's the art of point and shoot.

That said, since I moved to London last September, I have taken many pictures and I have posted them weekly on Facebook.  I would like to start posting some on this blog as my new years resolution for 2012.  I know I'm a little late, it's February already, but my New Year's resolution is to see a new place in London every week, and I want to post some of my pictures here and share some of the stories behind them.  Who knows, maybe it'll be helpful to you if you come to London someday, or if you already live here, you may find out about a new place worth visiting.

Anyway, I'll leave it at that for now.  We'll see if it works out.