Marvel at the pulsating excitement of Times Square, where bustling crowds are dwarfed by glittering neon. You can pick up a half-price ticket for a Broadway evening performance at TKTS Ticket Booth in Times Square.

Meet the city on a bus tour (most companies offer several to choose from), then spend time exploring those that captured your imagination. You can try Gray Line/Short Line Tours, which offers trolley tours, double decker buses and bus tours of the city from two to nine hours long. On New York Apple Tours, visitors can see the sights by hopping on and off authentic London double-decker buses at 48 locations an unlimited number of times for two consecutive days. New York Double Decker Tours, runs a continuous loop throughout Manhattan; pay one price and step on and off at your leisure.

Wander through Grand Central Terminal at 42nd and Lexington, with its ornate early urban architecture and cavernous grand concourse.

You will love a quiet carriage ride around Central Park, then watch wildlife in their natural habitats recreated at the Central Park Wildlife Conservation Center, at 64th and Fifth Avenue.

Tour Rockefeller Center, between 42nd and 57th Street and from 5th to 6th Avenue. Here you will find Radio City Music Hall and the NBC studios, where you can watch the live broadcast of the Today Show from ground-floor studios at Rockefeller Plaza. The building itself is one of the great art deco masterpieces of the city.

Take an elevator to the top of the Empire State Building, once the tallest but still with the most spectacular view in the world. Walk out on the deck and see the city from above.