Hello everyone thought I would do a little more Bristol blogging. Today was our last day of tours, which went very well, and we had members of the Sierra Leone community come aboard and do a relibation ceremony, which was really interesting and made me so much more excited to sail into Freetown.  After we had finished up and packed away the display Drew took me and the rest of the students to do a bit of sailing down the harbor on a little sailing boat which was a lot of fun and the man teaching us was really nice and joined us for dinner back on the Amistad.
  Besides tours we been able to get out and see bits and piece of the town, either on our days off or with professor Williams doing public history tours. We have visited the Georgian House, which was owned by a slave owner who had a sugar plantation in Nevis. We have also done part of a walking tour of the Bristol Slave trail and visited the breaking the chains exhibit which was excellent in my view it had loads of great information about before, during and after the abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade. I do believe though to get all the excellent information you would have to spend at least 3- 5 hours reading all the different parts. Compared to the International Slavery Museum I thought this one had a more topics discussed but was a bit less visual than the museum in Liverpool.  One part I found really great was that at the end they had what they called a Vox Box where you could speak your mind about what you thought about the exhibit, what you liked or disliked, what surprised you and your general feelings on the whole massive topic of slavery and after you recorded your own you were able to go back and see and listen to how others felt. This to me made me feel as if public history was really working. Its one thing to see the views of the past pasted in front of you but to hear about the public’s reaction and to try to feel their take on the information just makes the exhibit so much more meaningful. 
   So tomorrow we are doing a bit of a yard period fixing up our lovely boat to sail her down on to London, which should be great and I’m praying the weather stays fine. I won’t be heart broken if  I don’t have to pull out the old foul weather gear for this part of the trip. Besides working with the crew and the students everything is going great and I’m really enjoying myself. Can’t wait for next port though, London here I come!

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