February 26-28

This past weekend, a majority of the Loyola students on our trip (including myself) took a trip to Belgium. In my case, it was a last minute decision due to the fact that I was unsure of what there was to see in Belgium.

In retrospect, there was a lot. 

After putting on our parkas and packing our cold weather accessories, we flew two hours to Brussels on Friday night and walked a bit to try and find our hostel. Our room and the hostel in general were much nicer than I expected. We got lucky and didn't have to share a room with strangers, always a plus. 

We got settled in and set out to grab something to eat and some drinks afterwards. We wanted to go to a bar called Delrium which was supposed to have over 2000 different varieties of beer (which is crazy and sounded awesome) but I'm pretty convinced that we went to the wrong place. Either way, it was a lot of fun. The only downside was that it was a lot harder to find something good to eat than it is in Rome...I guess I wasn't too surprised by this. 

The second day I woke up with plans that were unclear and a craving for some Belgian waffles. Our destination for the morning was the Grand Place, a magnificent square composed of extraordinary looking buildings. After admiring the architecture, we were on the lookout for waffles. We found a small store with all of the topping options displayed in the window. I chose chocolate and strawberries. 

It was just as good as it looks.

Waffles in hand, we walked back over to the grand place to get some photos and enjoy the view one more time before moving on. 

Photo: Waffles in the Grand Place

At this point, probably because we stopped for the photo op, Meg and I lost the group and weren't able to get in touch with them because our phones don't work without wi-fi outside of Italy. We made the best out of this situation and stopped in a café, where I had the closest thing to American coffee that I've been able to find in Europe thus far. 

After we finally found the group, we established that we'd be venturing to Brugges, another city in Belgium. In Brugges (also the title of a movie), we walked around and came across a lake and I took advantage of yet another photo op.

We continued to the main square of the city, which was bordered by more beautiful buildings. We stayed there for a bit, enjoying the atmosphere, before getting on another train. We were headed to Leuven, another Belgian city,for the night. One of Loyola's abroad programs was stationed there, so we got a chance to catch up with some friends. The earliest train back to Brussels was at 4am, so we had no choice but to stay up all night, which turned out being pretty fun. 

After a long, adventurous  weekend, we returned to home sweet Rome.