It's Not Uzbekistan, but It's Tasty. Now, Pass the Horseradish.

5:12 p.m. We've been all over: At the Pickle Guys shop, wooden barrels are filled with not only cucumber pickles but also pickled garlic, string beans, green tomatoes and peppers (and, in the summer, watermelon). It's a week before Passover, so they're grinding horseradish out on the sidewalk, a messy, loud and pungent affair. We try new, half-sour and full-sour pickles, plus some freshly ground horseradish, the faces of the five of us a tableau of puckered mouths.

We stop at the Chinese Lucky King Bakery, with all kinds of spongy, flaky and multi-hued cookies, cakes and dumplings; a fruit stand where a vendor chops a foul-smelling durian fruit; DiPalo Dairy, an Italian import shop with tire-size cheese wheels; and Alleva Dairy, where we sample marinated mozzarella and rolls of prosciutto. A friend in the District had told me that one thing he missed about New York was rice balls. Alleva just sold its last one of the day, so I'll have to go back to see what my buddy was talking about.

At the moment, we're sipping espresso and eating mini cannolis at the tour's final stop, Ferrara Cafe, an Italian bakery on Grand Street.

6:02 p.m. Abby and I travel uptown on the subway to Xai Xai Wine Bar to meet her fiance, Christian, and some friends at the hopping (and tiny) new South African restaurant and bar. We're starving; on the tour, we had only small samples wherever we went, nothing close to a meal. At Xai Xai (pronounced a little like "shy-shy"), there's not even room on the table for the jelly-jar water glasses after we order a bottle of pinotage and some food: a delicious bread fritter stuffed with minced beef (called vetkoek) and two orders of mini bunny chow, a curry made with lamb, potatoes and Indian spices served in a bread bowl.

7:28 p.m. The Philip Glass opera "Satyagraha," about Gandhi's years in South Africa, is having its New York premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House. Our seats are so close to the ceiling I can see the artful cracks in the gold paint. Our seats may be nosebleed, but the tickets were $25 a pop -- almost unheard of for opera in Washington.

12:14 a.m. It's raining out and we're grumbling and laughing about the drawn-out third act in what was an otherwise stunning performance. Christian admits that during the last 20 minutes, he was so hungry he started superimposing a pizza on the tenor's head.

1:08 a.m. At Big Nick's Burger and Pizza Joint, at 77th and Broadway, we command a table in the back where we can dig into New York's famed pizza. Tall glasses of beer and thin-crust pie taste so good, I forget that I've been up for more than 20 hours, eating for most of them.