An 80-Block Slice of City Life

WANT to get a strong sense of New York as a tourist? Then, instead of dashing the length and width of Manhattan, spend the whole weekend in one walkable neighborhood, freeing yourself from subways and taxis. By Sunday afternoon you'll be swaggering through streets that feel familiar, waving to the shopkeepers and scratching the ears of the cutest of the local dogs.

A prime candidate for such a stay is the East Village, the neighborhood bordered by the Bowery and Third Avenue, East 14th Street, Avenue D and Houston. It's a charming and walkable chunk of the city so packed with restaurants, theaters and oddball shops that you will see no reason to leave all weekend. If you're the kind of traveler who loves to tell friends back home about the place you “just stumbled upon,” you couldn't stumble around a better 80 square blocks.

There's even a fancy-schmancy new boutique hotel to stay in: the Bowery Hotel, which opened in February on what was once America's most notorious skid row. Its residents in the early 1900s could have lived (and drunk) for a year on the $500 or so it will cost you for one night's stay. In April, Denny Lee wrote in The Times that the hotel “evokes the Gilded Age of red waistcoats, hand-set bricks and wood-paneled elevators.” (Or stay at the Whitehouse Hotel, a hostel with $30 rooms that evokes the Budget Age of shared bathrooms.)

When exploring, focus on the side streets. That's how you will find places like the Casey Rubber Stamps store, the stop par excellence for those who want to imprint their stationery with a cow, Saturn or the Cheshire cat. Its sign says the store is open Saturdays 1 to 8 p.m. and closed Sundays, but adds, “Sometimes we are open later and on Sundays, just for the hell of it.”

You may also come across several old-fashioned record stores, oddly anachronistic until you realize they're aimed at D.J.'s. Or a shop on East Ninth Street called Giant Robot, which specializes in graffiti books and kooky dolls from Asian pop culture and is next door to Pink Olive, a gift shop for people who prefer their dolls traditionally cute. Or you might end up getting a massage at the Russian and Turkish Baths on 10th Street. (A challenge for storytelling tourists: how exactly to describe just how cold the cold pool is, without using the words “freezing” or “torture.”)

You'll also have no problem finding story-worthy food. A case in point: Pylos, a bustling Greek spot on East Seventh Street that earned one star from Frank Bruni of The Times in 2005. He wrote that it “has been put together with considerable care and operates with unusual grace, a conscientious ambassador of Greek cooking.” Then again, you might be tempted into the equally bustling wine and fondue spot a few steps up the block, the Bourgeois Pig.

Or, seek out those masters of Venezuelan stuffed corn cakes, Caracas Arepa Bar (on the same block), or Japanese spots serving yakitori (stuff on skewers) on St. Marks Place, or the macaroni-and-cheese emporium known as S'Mac. When Sunday brunch comes along, make like the natives and wait in line forever for brunch at Cafe Orlin, or Mogador (if noontime merguez couscous sounds good).

For just hanging out, there's Tompkins Square Park, known in the East Village's bad old days (1988) and really old days (1874) for riots, and today for its pleasant greenery and ultrasocial dog runs. A farmers' market is there on Sundays for your instant snacking needs, though for your cookie and cupcake needs walk a few blocks to the Sweet Things Bake Shop, run by the nonprofit Lower Eastside Girls Club and open Wednesdays through Saturdays from noon to 6.

If the 10 zillion bars and clubs, many with live music, won't satisfy your night-life tastes, Off Off Broadway theaters abound.

Of course, you could always get lazy and spend the night in the Bowery Hotel's restaurant, Gemma, then retire to its din-free Lobby Bar, whose clubby dark wood, tapestries and dim lighting would recall a medieval ski lodge, if there were such a thing to recall. The ingredients in its signature $18 Bowery Cocktail, a slightly sweet, red number in a martini glass with a twist, are so confidential that neither the cocktail menu nor the coy waitresses will reveal them. So it's lucky The Times's Style section already printed the recipe: Hendrick's Gin, Dubonnet Rouge, one rough-cut brown sugar cube and a dash of Angostura bitters, topped with Henriot Champagne and a lemon twist.

See, the East Village's secrets are never that hard to discover.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Bowery Hotel, 335 Bowery (at Third Street), (212) 505-9100; www.theboweryhotel.com.

Whitehouse Hotel, 340 Bowery (between Second and Great Jones), (212) 477-5623; www.whitehousehotelofny.com.

Pylos, 128 East Seventh Street (between First Avenue and A), (212) 473-0220; www.pylosrestaurant.com.

Bourgeois Pig, 122 East Seventh Street (between First and A), (212) 475-2246; www.thepigny.com.

Caracas Arepa Bar, 93 ½ East Seventh Street (between First and A), (212) 529-2314; www.caracasarepabar.com.

S'Mac, 345 East 12th Street (between First and Second), (212) 358-7912; www.smacnyc.com.

Cafe Orlin, 41 St. Marks Place (between First and Second), (212) 777-1447.

Cafe Mogador, 101 St. Marks Place (between First and A), (212) 677-2226; www.cafemogador.com.

Casey Rubber Stamps, 322 East 11th Street (between First and Second), (917) 669-4151.

Sweet Things Bake Shop at Lower Eastside Girls Club, 136 Avenue C (between Eighth and Ninth), (212) 982-1633; www.girlsclub.org.