Turning 50 - NY USA here we come!: 13.9.15 - Day 9. Sunday - Brooklyn Gospel, Buon Gusto, Whitney Museum, Bubby's,

Up about 6.15 - tootled out for milk and fruit.

Subway to Wall St today for our Brooklyn Gospel Tour.

We all want what Julie's having (melatonin) as she slept pretty well for a first nighter.

NB: From 9/11 - we did experience additional security, some very heavily armed 'black ops' police with machine type guns, plus quite a few armed forces in their full cammo regalia.

Headed out just after 8 for downtown, to the Trinity Church, meeting place for the Brooklyn Gospel Walking Tour.

Here we all are, at 'our' subway station - 96th Street on the green line.

Subway Art

We arrived and signed in with our NY Pass and headed off to look around Wall St FiDi (Financial District) including:

NY Stock Exchange
The Wall St Bull
Trinity Church Graveyard.

Trinity Church Graveyard

Building in FiDi

There it is.

New York Stock Exchange

The Bull

Hard to capture without many people surrounding it.

Graveyard shot again.

Then James took us away - a short walk to Wall St.Where he gave us the lowdown on the elements of Gospel and got us in the mood for audience involvment, with a bit of singing etc.

James, our Tour Guide.

We then too the Subway under the East River to Fulton St in Brooklyn where we toured around the streets and learnt about the churches and architecture, history of the area.

BTW, the five elements of Gospel are:

Repetition
Call and Response
Rhythm
Intonation
Improvisation

We walked for two hours including Brooklyn Promenade with views of Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge.

Looking back at Manhattan.

Some of the streetscape

Then up through the streets past several different types of architecture in the tenements - gothic, federal etc.

Another Architectural style.

Church steeple with most amazing, quirky tree.

Justice atop a building on Brooklyn Borough Hall.

Then final stop was Brooklyn Tabernacle Church, which we were attending for their usual Sunday service - 2 hours. We were allowed to take pics prior to the commencement.

Roof in the Tabernacle Church

Here we are in our pew.

Beautifully decorated, as evidenced by the end of this pew. These seats were all full by the start of service.

A not very good shot of the Choir before we started.

It was all very moving, with a choir of 200 led by a singer with a microphone, the preachers and 3000 of us in the audience.

We sang, clapped, swayed, gave money, saw several babies/children welcomed to the Church.

Following the service, we walked back towards 'Justice' and into Montague Street for lunch at Buon Gusto - very nice it was too. Bit of an incident between and taxi driver and obnoxious passenger, but NYPD came to the rescue and sorted it out.

Lunch at Buon Gusto.

Lyn and I headed off to do our helicopter flight, but when we 'popped up' at Bowling Green station it was raining. So a reconfiguration of plans, back to the Subway to Chelsea and off to Whitney Museum via Chelsea Market for a quick squiz. We had about an hour at Whitney to look at the Art, the views, the building etc.

Water tank from Top of Whitney

Andy Warhol Coca Cola piece.

An art work that took my fancy - John Jasper, Three Flags.

June Vaik - V-yramid.

Glen Ligon - America.

Cool colourful chairs on Whitney balcony, not sure if they were art and functional...or just cool functional.

After the Whitney, Lyn and I had definitely earned the Hard Texan Cider I had at Bunny's just opposite the Whitney, before a walk through Chelsea and Meatpackers district. It was great, beautiful light at 'golden hour.'