As we wandered back from the Amnesty International concert on Wednesday night I realised I needed contact lens fluid – the nice man at Customs decided that my bottle was a dangerous weapon under some federal code and swiped it. It contained lethal peroxide apparently.

Where else in the world could you get fluid at 1am? New York of course. Duane Reads (like our Boots) was open 24 hours – and it was busy! I queued and wondered where all of the people had come from!

But this was just the start of the late night adventure. Forvarious reasons we had skipped ‘tea’ – and were decidedly hungry. The deli looked appealing – and it was very definitely open. But more appealingly was Scotties – on Lexington. A proper grungy New York diner. And he did food 24 hours a day.

So we did. It was, in my case, pastrami and gravy on bread. It was also 1.30am and reminded me of those days when you came out of a club (a long long time ago) and hit the kebab house. But this was clearly a place where life carries on irrespective of the time. When we arrived the place was half full. It was quieter when we left 45 minutes later! We left satisfied – the food was great as you can see from the image!

New York really is the 24 hour city. There is no necessity for them to close – there’s always someone to buy something – whether that is contact lens fluid, a bar of chocolate or a pastrami sandwich…

We have much to learn!