36 Hours in Chicago

The neighborhoods on Chicago’s near northwest side are an invigorating blend of reflection and reinvention. Families from Ukraine, Poland and Puerto Rico settled here, and today expressions of their cultures can be found in museums, churches and cafes serving traditional dishes. These have been joined by new restaurants and bars, fresh faces that honor a past of ice cream parlors, tiki dens and breakfast as the best meal of the day. These neighborhoods are great places for long walks — to parks, pubs and blues clubs — on bothlandmark boulevards and a landscaped trail where freight trains once rumbled.

1. A Taste of Ukraine, 1 p.m.

A small bowl of borscht and a half-dozen pierogies — is that enough for lunch? “It depends on how hungry you are,” said the waitress at the Shokolad Pastry & Cafe in Ukrainian Village. “You don’t want to be stuffed.” Good thought — and it allows for dessert (shokolad means chocolate). The first-rate beet soup ($4) is served with fluffy focaccia. Mushroom and potato pierogi ($4.25 for six) are easy eating. Sandwich cookies (ginger, hazelnut) are 60 cents each; buy a bag.

2. Afternoon at the Museums, 2 p.m.

At the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (suggested donation, $5) the permanent collection includes works by Ukraine-born artists like Anton Skorubsky Kandinsky, Olga Antonenko and Alexandra Diachenko. For a recent exhibition, “Chernobyl 30 Years Later,” the museum enlisted 30 Chicago artists to provide perspectives on the nuclear disaster in Ukraine. At the nearby Ukrainian National Museum of Chicago, docents guide visitors through a collection that ranges from celebratory (the vibrantly painted Ukrainian Easter eggs called pysanky) to somber (an exhibit about the Holodomor, the famine orchestrated by Stalin in the early 1930s). It is a small museum but its messages stay with you.

3. Humboldt Havens, 8 p.m.

Slip into a booth at the handsome Haywood Tavern, a Humboldt Park pub with an accomplished kitchen. Start with smoked catfish dip with fresh potato chips ($7) and a Sneeze Guard cocktail (whiskey, lemon, ginger beer — a refreshing cure for the cold you don’t have; $8) and move on to grilled trout ($19) or a husky double cheeseburger made with Slagel Farms beef ($14). Then go across the street and into the seductive rouge glow of the California Clipper cocktail lounge (the building dates to 1911), where, if you’re lucky, the guitarist Joel Paterson’s trio the Modern Sounds will be playing. “I tend to play jazz and swing because it kind of fits the room,” Mr. Paterson said. A Founders All Day I.P. A. ($5) is the proper pairing with “Beer Bottle Mama.”

4. Nightcap at the Club, Midnight

The Rainbo Club in Wicker Park is said to be the inspiration for the Tug & Maul in Nelson Algren’s “The Man With the Golden Arm” (he lived and wrote close by) and it makes few concessions to time. The stage where burlesque dancers once shimmied, still there. A Pabst Blue Ribbon is $2, a 3 Floyds Yum Yum pale ale, $5. Records are played on a turntable. Late one Saturday night, at appropriately high volume, came the insistent bass line of the garage-rock classic “Pushin’ Too Hard.” A patron stood up, raised his arms and with unadulterated joy asked, “Is this the Seeds?”

5. Hitting the Trail, 9 a.m.

Grab a well-made cappuccino at Caffé Streets and head for the Wood Street entrance to the 606, once an elevated rail line, now a wide, welcoming walkway that takes runners, strollers and cyclists through northwest-side neighborhoods. Urban and pastoral meet-up: The El rolling overhead at Milwaukee Avenue. On North Humboldt Boulevard you’ll find the marker at 1667, where L. Frank Baum wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (his home has since been torn down). Follow your own mellow, quick road to North Avenue and Roeser’s Bakery, in business since 1911. Allow time for scouting before taking a number — Swedish flop coffee cakes, maple bacon long johns and a boatload of bismarcks (pastries from $1.19). Take them across the street to Humboldt Park, where the statue of the explorer Leif Eriksonspeaks (it’s part of the Statue Stories Chicago program). This Leif, the voice of the Second City alum Fred Willard, gives props to himself and gently disses Columbus (Columbus could not be reached for comment).

6. Art in the Park, 11 a.m.

The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture (free) is in the oldest surviving structure in Humboldt Park: stables built in the 1890s. Inside the red-roofed building with its gables and turrets, contemporary Puerto Rican art is on view (paintings by Oscar Luis Martinez, who lives in the city, were recently shown in the second-floor gallery).

7. A Jibarito and Cabrito, 1 p.m.

You can go the buffet route or get table service at La Palma, a cheerful Puerto Rican cafe in Humboldt Park (in a mural, a grinning frog plays the bongos). Take the table; that way you can ask the enthusiastic servers which filling they recommend in the jibarito ($7.75), the sandwich in which disks of plantain serve as a crisp bun; you can’t go wrong with pernil(slow-roasted pork). The tender cabrito (goat stew), a weekend special, is another must ($12.95 with side dishes).

8. Ice Cream Dreams, 2 p.m.

Claim a stool at Spinning J, a sweet twirl on an old-time soda fountain (the 1920s marble counter came from a pharmacy in Milwaukee) opened last year by the baker Dinah Grossman and Parker Whiteway. Ms. Grossman makes outstanding pies — banana cream drizzled with caramel, lemon Shaker (from $5) — and shakes, sodas and floats (from $6.50) are superb. The sassafras in the house-made root beer: foraged.

9. Get to the Greek, 7 p.m.

The chef David Schneider was of the opinion that Greek cuisine, and culture, had become something of a “cartoon” and he didn’t like it. So he devised his excellent restaurant Taximin Wicker Park to “show that there’s regionalism in Greece.” Try the fried cauliflower with whipped feta ($8); the cloud of tzatziki with cucumbers and dill ($6); the duck gyro with a pomegranate reduction ($25); and a bottle of Greek red from a list deep with discoveries. Mr. Schneider, whose mother is Greek and who has spent considerable time there, makes his own yogurt and breads (the pita is outstanding). It’s a good-looking place — vaulted ceilings, copper-topped tables — with an abundance of energy. The rooftop recently opened for the season. At this elevation, Mr. Schneider will be serving lamb roasted as shepherds doin the mountains of Crete.

10. Blues Project, 9 p.m.

The Happy New Year banner was still up in April at Rosa’s Lounge in Logan Square, but it doesn’t seem out of date — this is an upbeat place, from the greeting at the door to the dynamic performance by Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials (weekend tickets $12 to $20), led by Ed Williams, who plays a scorching slide guitar. Rosa Mangiullo and her son Tony, a drummer, opened the club 32 years ago, after moving to Chicago from Milan. “To me blues is an honest form of expression,” Mr. Mangiullo said. Vaclav Havel, then the president of the Czech Republic, was in the house in 1993. Magic Slim played — Mr. Havel’s request.

11. Tiki Time, 11:30 p.m.

The cocktail magazine Imbibe named Lost Lake its bar of the year for 2016, and three sips into a Tic-Tac-Taxi (two rums, coconut, passionfruit, lime; $12), you are pretty sure the vote was unanimous. This blast of “Blue Hawaii” comes from Paul McGee, among the city’s most praised bartenders, and Shelby Allison, his wife. Drinks are beautifully balanced; the Lost Lake with aged rum and pineapple has a nip of Campari ($12), and sherry sidles into more than one cocktail. The room nods to places like Don the Beachcomber — lots of bamboo, banana-leaf wallpaper — and the soundtrack includes new-wave surf (“Bikini Sunset” by the Volcanos) and reggae. It’s a giddy getaway; the banana adorning a daiquiri, carved to resemble a dolphin (complete with clove eyes), really is smiling at you.

12. Jam Session, 9 a.m.

The salmon is smoked in house. The pastrami too. The hollandaise — English pea, maitake mushroom — changes with the season. The chef at Jam, Jeffrey Mauro, cooked for Charlie Trotter and Bruce Sherman (at North Pond), and he brings considerable creativity to breakfasts and lunches at his bustling Logan Square cafe. The smoked salmon plate with perfectly poached eggs and potato-leek cakes ($16), a chive waffle with sausage and fennel cream gravy ($14) — everything’s delicious. You’ll want a Bacon Old-Fashioned, too ($9). Because it’s breakfast. After, walk east on Logan, one of the prettiest stretches of the city’s boulevard system (don’t miss the Rath house at 2703 West Logan, a prime example of Prairie School architecture).

13. Market Place, 11 a.m.

The Logan Square Farmers’ Market is a spirited Sunday showcase for everything from fresh produce (Mr. Mauro is a frequent shopper) to Zullo’s zeppole. You may be too full for a Croatian sausage from Cevapcici Chicago, but you can take home caramels from Katherine Anne Confections and Gouda from Stamper Cheese Company, whose banner reads “Caseum Diem — Cheese the Day.”

The Wicker Park Inn, 1329 North Wicker Park Avenue, wickerparkinn.com. Rooms from $109. Pleasant staff; continental breakfast included.

Ruby Room, 1743-45 West Division Street, rubyroom.com. Something of a retreat on a busy street (no TV). Rooms from $130.