Palacio Barolo

Okay, so I know I am way behind in posting these, but I am putting them up anyway. I have been in Rosario for over a week now, but these pictures are from Buenos Aires. Our last night in Buenos Aires a small group of us decided to visit Palacio Barolo. It is a building designed by an Italian man who wanted to create a building based off of Dante's "Inferno." The bottom floor is Hell, then the following floors are purgatory until you reach the top- which is heaven. The middle of the building is all circular and each part of the architecture holds some sort of significance. For example, on each of the levels of purgatory there is a sculpture in the walls representing one of the deadly sins. We took a tour with Tomas, who was quite knowledgable and was able to tell us everything in Spanish and in English. It was a lot of fun, especially climbing the lighthouse type stairs up into heaven. The views of Buenos Aires were amazing as you can see here.

View of the Plaza de Congreso

Our tour group (just four of us are with Study Abroad) at the end of our tour, in a 1920s era office.

Of course one of the best parts was when Tomas actually took us up into the lighthouse and had us all sit around the edge- BUT NOT ON THE GLASS! Sitting perched above the city with just glass between you and the ground way below is a little intimidating. Then he turned on the light and showed us how it rotated around and how it was supposed to be used as a beacon, but couldn't be. And as a final surprise he showed us how he could also use the light to call Batman. Everyone got a great laugh out of that one:

Here you can see the reflection of the light on the windows behind us.

It was a great way to finish up our stay in Buenos Aires before leaving at noon the next day on a bus for Rosario. Between getting lost trying to get out of the subway station (after thinking we were doing so great taking the subway all by ourselves), walking several blocks in the wrong direction, and having to ask a police officer how to take the subway back, it made for a quite memorable night!