Hello all! My name is Will and this is my first study abroad blog for Alabama! To give some context, I am a third-year Electrical Engineering student at Alabama, and I am studying at University College Dublin in Ireland for the semester. Studying abroad has definitely been a crazy experience so far, and I just got back from my first weekend trip, so I figured now was a great time to blog! There was a bank holiday in Ireland this past weekend, so we had no classes on Monday. I decided to depart for Brussels, Belgium for a few days since I have no classes as well on Tuesdays. I arrived in Brussels early Sunday after waking up at 2 AM for my 6 AM flight, and spent the day exploring Belgium's capital, looking at the architecture, and of course eating lots of chocolate and waffles! After thinking that I got a good enough sense of Brussels, I departed on a day trip to Bruges the second day. It was about an hour train ride, and I’m so glad I went! I think I would say I even liked it better than Brussels. Activities for the day included buying chocolate from a renowned chocolatier, climbing a huge bell tower, eating more waffles, visiting a medieval torture museum, Belgian beer tasting, taking a boat tour through the canals of the city (pictured below), and seeing a really old medieval church! It was definitely a packed day, but so worth all the effort. Today I came back to Dublin for classes tomorrow and am greatly looking forward to lots of future weekend trips!
