New York: Step By Step Put One Foot In Front Of The Other, Savor The Manhattan That Lies Between Tourist Attractions

I always suspected there was more to Manhattan … miles and miles more. I’d just never seen it.

Like most people who visit Manhattan, I kept to Midtown. That’s where most of the hotels are, and it’s also where you’ll find most of the other big tourist attractions: Times Square, Broadway theaters, Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, Bloomingdales, Carnegie Hall and the Museum of Modern Art. A tourist can easily spend an entire vacation in Manhattan without descending below 30th Street or above 59th Street.

During a recent trip I came upon the cheapest - and for that matter, the best - possible way to see the rest of Manhattan. In fact, you might say I stumbled upon it.

I saw it on foot.

In the course of two days of purposeful walking, I trekked the length of Manhattan from the southern tip near Battery Park to a point more than 120 blocks north, near the upper end of Central Park. Not only did I save on cab and subway fare, but I felt as if I had experienced Manhattan in a way that many tourists don’t. I was immersed in its sights and smells, which are not always as noxious as David Letterman would have us believe.

I didn’t actually plan this walking tour. In fact, I started off by taking the subway down to the Wall Street financial district at the southern end of the island. I was going to take the subway back to my Midtown hotel, but, as we will see, events intervened.

When I got off the subway, I began exploring the narrow canyons of the Wall Street financial district. Traders in their distinctive New York Stock Exchange jackets, or smocks, were gathered on the sidewalks for a smoke. All around was the hum and bustle of money.

I walked over to the nearby World Trade Center and briefly considered taking the elevator to the top, but the $8 price dissuaded me. Instead, I walked down to Battery Park and then worked my way around to the South Street Seaport, a rare bit of old Manhattan that hearkens back to the days when New York was a sailing port. Several sailing ships were docked there; you can tour them, and you can also browse the South Street Seaport Museum and the Fulton Fish Market.

To rest my tired feet, I walked over to a tiny, ancient restaurant crowded with boisterous Wall Streeters (the market was booming that morning). The place was called Carmine’s Italian Seafood and I proceeded to have the best spaghetti with white clam sauce I’ve tasted in years.

I also proceeded to hatch my walking plan. It was still early in the day; I didn’t want to take the subway back to my hotel and sit there for the rest of the afternoon.

The distance back to my 40th Street hotel looked impossibly long on the New York street map, some 60 blocks. But calculated by the map scale, I realized it was barely four miles, an easy afternoon’s walk by the standards of, say, a hike in the Bitterroots.

I was lured mostly by the names on my map, places I had read about all my life and seen in the movies: The Bowery, Little Italy, Chinatown, Chelsea, Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side.

The Bowery was my first stop. I knew the name from the old Bowery Boys comedies of the ‘40s, and much more realistically through the stories of Joseph Mitchell (“Up in the Old Hotel”). The Bowery is New York’s traditional Skid Row, but for a midday walker it turned out to be no more forbidding than Seattle’s Pioneer Square.

As I walked up the Bowery (a street which eventually merges with Broadway), I found myself on the border of Chinatown. Roasted ducks were hanging in shop windows; the aroma of kimchi wafted out from Korean storefronts.

The aromas switched from dim sum to provolone as I skirted the edges of Little Italy. This traditional Italian neighborhood doesn’t have as many Italian residents as it did earlier in the century - it has become homogenized - but it still has plenty of enticing Italian restaurants and shops.

As I made my way back to the Bowery and headed north, I discovered that nearly every block has its own character. One was jammed with stores selling secondhand restaurant equipment. Another specialized in lighting fixtures; yet another offered carpets.

Somewhere along this stretch, I ran across the tiny, graffiti-covered club called CBGB’s, a legendary rock dive and the early home of the Talking Heads and the Ramones. I suppose you could say this block specialized in punk.

I made a short detour east on Delancey Street into the Lower East Side, which is where generations of immigrants lived in crowded tenements during the early part of the century. There, you can still see crowded lanes overhung with fire escapes, like something from “The Godfather.” The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which is dedicated to the immigrant heritage, was nearby on Orchard Street, but unfortunately it was closed that day.

From there, I jogged west, heading toward the center of Greenwich Village, Washington Square Park. I wandered at random through the streets of Greenwich Village, marching past such famous musical landmarks as The Bottom Line, The Bitter End and the Village Vanguard.

In the interests of time, I resisted the lure of the used book stores. But I took the opportunity to wander through New York University’s student union. Universities don’t get any more urban than this: NYU consists of various buildings surrounding Washington Square Park.

I didn’t have time to venture into the East Village, an even-more-Bohemian offshoot of Greenwich Village, or south into Soho’s art gallery country. But I skirted Chelsea, a partly gentrified area specializing in antique shops and other storefronts.

North of Greenwich Village, the neighborhoods become less defined. As I headed up Broadway, I walked through pigeon-filled Union Square and Madison Square parks, and then I was back in Midtown’s commercial and business district.

As I entered the home stretch toward my hotel on Fifth Avenue, I paused to admire the Empire State Building and New York Public Library.

The entire expedition from Battery Park northward took about six hours.

But I wasn’t finished yet. The next morning, a business appointment took me the other direction, to the Upper West Side, a huge middle-class area of apartments and brownstones west of Central Park. So after my appointment, I decided to return to my hotel via another hiking expedition, which would eventually cover 50 or 60 blocks. I saw a completely different side of Manhattan.

The first mile or so was through Central Park, parts of which resembled a hike through the forest. In some spots, the trail wound around rocky outcroppings, over knolls and alongside duck-filled ponds. For a few moments, I had the disconcerting experience of being lost in the woods, in the middle of one of the biggest mega-cities on Earth.

Most of Central Park seemed surprisingly familiar, because so many movies are shot there. For instance, I strolled around the same fountain I had just seen in the big kidnapping scene from Mel Gibson’s “Ransom.”

As I walked down Central Park, I made occasional forays westward out of the park. For instance, I walked through Lincoln Center and gawked at the Juilliard School, the Metropolitan Opera, the Avery Fisher Hall and the Alice Tully Recital Hall.

Then I went back across Central Park to its eastern boundary, Fifth Avenue. The famous Plaza Hotel stood guard at the southeast corner of the park, and the horse-drawn carriages sat waiting to give rides to honeymooners and families of tourists. I continued my march down Fifth past such famous stores as FAO Schwarz and Bergdorf Goodman. I slipped into Tiffany & Co. to admire the gold necklaces, diamond rings and silver spoons.

Speaking of diamonds, I took a detour west at 47th Street and found myself in the Diamond District, a two-block-long area of jewelry exchanges.

On Fifth Avenue, I also walked past St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which I had visited earlier on the trip. This mid-19th Century Roman Catholic cathedral is the largest Catholic church in the U.S. and the 11th largest church in the world. With its spectacular Gothic-style architecture, it’s well worth a visit.

When I finally arrived back at my hotel, four or five hours after starting, I felt like I had taken good advantage of one of the best walking cities in the world.

I also decided that the next day, I would splurge and take a cab to LaGuardia. I draw the line at walking through Queens.

For more structured (and shorter) walking tours of Manhattan, check “AAA’s New York Destination Guide,” “Frommer’s New York Walking Tours” or other New York guidebooks.

Also visit New York’s official tourism web site at http:/ /www.nycvisit.com, or telephone the Convention and Visitors Bureau at (212) 397-8222.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Color Photos