When out-of-town friends visit, we recommend they start their sight-seeing right in the city's heart--midtown, home to Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, the newly glitzy Times Square and 5th Avenue. Here, skyscrapers turn the streets into canyons of commerce, yet there's always a hot dog or pretzel within reach.

Before diving into the bustle, get a new perspective on the city with a cruise on the Circle Line (212-563-3200; price: $26, $13 for children under 12), whose fabled boats have carried people around New York Harbor since the 1940s. Leaving from the company's Hudson River dock on 12th Avenue at the very western end of 42nd Street, the three-hour tour ("Hey, just like in Gilligan's Island!" notes Edwin) takes you around the entire island of Manhattan, offering views of the Empire State Building, the steel-topped Chrysler Building and the ornate Woolworth Building--each of which once held the record for "World's Tallest Building." From my kids' vantage point, however, the tour's best part is the chance to glide underneath the bridges we normally drive over. When our boys were younger, we had read THE LITTLE RED LIGHTHOUSE AND THE GREAT GRAY BRIDGE, and as we passed beneath the George Washington Bridge, there that very lighthouse still stood, a David versus Goliath triumph that had us all cheering. If you still have your sea legs after the cruise, next door to the Circle Line dock is the U.S.S. Intrepid, a giant World War II aircraft carrier, where you can climb aboard Air Force jets and even tour a nearby submarine.

Now that you've got your bearings on the city, head to Rockefeller Center, home to Radio City Music Hall (and its leggy Rockettes) and the television studios of NBC (on 49th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues; 70-minute tours cost $17.95 for adults, $15.50 for children; 212-664-4444) and MTV (west side of Broadway, between 44th and 45th Streets). Do some window-shopping along lavish 5th Avenue, where even kids will find plenty to look at. On a recent trip, Edwin and Anton checked out the Bugs Bunny toys at the Warner Bros. Store then ogled a $6,000 life-size plush baby rhinoceros at FAO Schwarz, the landmark toy store (a full city block long) that offers rooms full of Barbie, Pokémon and everything else a kid could want. Meanwhile, Lynn gazed at an equally oversized diamond-and-emerald necklace in the window of Cartier.

Next stop: Mars, or more precisely, Mars 2112, an over-the-top theme restaurant that's located just north of the newly invigorated (and even more extravagantly neon-lit) Times Square. Stepping into a "spacecraft" for a bumpy virtual-reality lift to the dining room, you'll touch down for an evening meal of "little meteor" pizzas, "crater burgers" and green Martian drinks for the kids, and perhaps some "Sputnik Seafood Linguini" and a couple of "Mars-Tinis" for the grown-ups (1633 Broadway; 212-582-2112).

Finally, it's off to a show. No New York visit would be complete without some theater, but rather than spend $100 each for Broadway tickets, we recommend a night at the New Victory Theater on 42nd Street (646-223-3020). For $10 each (no show is more than $30), we got top-tier seats to see The Flaming Idiots, a terrific bunch of fire-juggling clowns who had Lynn and me laughing as much as our boys. "I'm going to try that when we get home," said Anton. Fortunately for all of us, he fell asleep instead.

Please keep in mind that phone numbers, addresses, and prices are subject to change. Updated August 2005.