New York City (think mostly Manhattan) has moved up in satisfaction rankings over the years, possibly thanks to a dedicated campaign to clean up the city in terms of safety and appearance. It wants visitors to remember it as the “Big Apple,” not the “Rotten Apple.”

This town belongs to venturers, as judged by the higher rating they give and the richness of their descriptions. They feel captivated by the energy of the city that never sleeps. They want to get involved and experience, first hand, as many of its treasures as possible. The diversity and number of activities available almost overwhelm them; no other place offers such rich variety. They describe it as being alive, exciting, entertaining, different from any other place they know about, scenic, never dull or boring, cultural, cosmopolitan and a great place for people watching. They cite a wide range of things that make the city great: Broadway theater, opera at the Met, symphony concerts in Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, the many things to do in Central Park, the quaintness of Greenwich Village, the sophistication of Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue, the Soho district, the beauty of the Upper East Side, the New York Stock Exchange, the Statue of Liberty, some of the great restaurants of the world and just the ambience of the city all capture their imagination. No other place comes close in this richness and diversity, they believe.

Fewer centrics like New York City, while those who do are amazed to see a place so different from any other city they know. But, they tend not to become as involved as venturers do in all the city has to offer.

New York City’s ethnic neighborhoods come alive when active visitors walk through them. For exciting food, shopping and general interest, see Chinatown, Little Italy and Atlantic Avenue’s Middle Eastern enclave.

Ready to risk getting lost? With a Brooklyn map in hand, make it a mission to find the home where Jennie Churchill (Winston Churchill’s mother) was born, and you’ll be treated to a stroll in a quiet neighborhood of brownstones. You can travel to and from the area by subway.

Take a helicopter tour. For other great views on a nice day, but a little closer to the ground, go to the top of the Empire State Building or go to the Top of the Rock (Rockefeller Center). Also, a lesser-known but charming choice for a little bird’s-eye viewing is the Roof Garden Cafe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where you can have cocktails and sandwiches, see outdoor exhibits and take in nice views of Central Park.

Take a guided running tour (see www.nycrun.com).

Get some serious exercise in Central Park. Choices include horseback riding, rowing a boat, jogging and bicycling. The path for jogging and cycling is closed to traffic on weekends.

Run in the New York City Marathon.

Like nightspots? Choices range from little pubs and cocktail lounges to dance clubs and full-blown lavish nightclubs. If you have the energy, start in Greenwich Village and finish up town for a variety of entertainment, ambience and cost.

Go ice skating at Rockefeller Center — or at any of several other rinks in the city. Check for the free skating in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library.

Walk the Times Square area and walk around Greenwich Village. Do the Village by daylight; come back to roam its lively streets at night.

Take the Circle Line sightseeing cruise around Manhattan to hear a narrated description of the sights. There are evening dinner cruises and other specialty cruises, too. For the man (or woman) in a hurry, get some of the same skyline viewing (and Statue of Liberty viewing, too) by taking the Staten Island Ferry, departing from the tip of Manhattan, to Staten Island and back. The ferry is free.

Go to Chinatown to shop and eat a family-style meal in any of many restaurants with tasty and well-priced food. Visit almost any bakery for great snacks.

See at least one Broadway show. If you are open to last-minute choices, buy at half price at a TKTS booth near Times Square. On another night, for an alternative experience, take in an Off-Off-Broadway show in a grungy little theater downtown.

New York is for the birds. Take guided bird walks in Central Park or the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Alternatively, thousands of migrating birds drop by each spring at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge’s 10,000 acres in Queens.

Visit the Cloisters in Upper Manhattan. A part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it the Cloisters was created by assembling European architectural elements, both secular and religious, that date from the 12th and 13th centuries. Hence, the buildings or parts of buildings (which include real cloisters) are as much treasures as is the medieval European art housed there.

Start a downtown walking tour at Wall Street, where numerous important sites are tucked into a tiny patch of land: Fraunces Tavern (where George Washington bade his troops farewell); the New York Stock Exchange; Federal Hall (also on Wall Street, where Washington was sworn in as president in 1789); Trinity Church (at Broadway and Wall, burial site for Alexander Hamilton and Robert Fulton); then up Broadway to St. Paul’s Chapel, where Washington attended services. This walk can reasonably end at the World Trade Center site.

Make it a food-focused visit. Here is your itinerary: Zabar’s, Citarella and Fairway on the Upper West Side for quintessentially New York food shopping; Chelsea Market on Ninth Avenue at 16th Street, in the old Nabisco Building and birthplace of the Oreo cookie; City Bakery, on W. 18th Street, to eat desserts and buy take-away sweets; New York Cake and Baking Co. on E. 22nd Street, for baking utensils and packaged baking goods; Broadway Panhandle on Broome Street in Soho, also for cooking utensils; Italian Food Center at Mulberry and Grand in Little Italy (where most of the population is Chinese), for Italian sausage; the Pipa restaurant inside ABC Carpet on Broadway and 19th Street, where diners can buy the furniture.

Come to New York for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Tree Lighting Ceremony at Rockefeller Center the next day. But, book well ahead. New York hotels are typically well filled throughout the holiday period.

Go to a national park and see one of America’s most famous attractions at the same time. That is the Statue of Liberty National Monument. On the same boat trip from Battery Park, you can disembark to see the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. Ellis Island, entry point for millions of immigrants until the 1920s, is part of the same park.

Walk in Central Park — which is larger than Monaco — any day of the week, but the place jumps with activity on pleasant weekend days. Take the camera, especially if you are in town for autumn colors. Call it the citified fall foliage tour.

Go shopping for all kinds of cameras, computers and other electronics (shop B&H Camera or Adorama for the best prices). The city is a haven for those who love to buy clothes, too.

Visit President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthplace on E. 20th Street in Manhattan. It is part of the U.S. National Park Service and you will be led through by a park ranger.

Visit the Lower East Side Tenement Museum for an eye-opening introduction to what life was like for many poor immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Take a tour of the United Nations headquarters building. Try to time your visit when the General Assembly is in session, which starts in September.

Go shopping, and some stores are sightseeing attractions, too. That can mean Saks Fifth Avenue, or the F.A.O. Schwartz toy store, or Macy’s when decorated for Christmas. For a really quirky one, look in on ABC Carpet & Home, at 19th Street and Broadway. The seven-story ABC offers a madcap array of home furnishings in eclectic styles; the displays might be called structured clutter.

Do you want to eat in a fancy restaurant but quake at the prices? Call ahead to see if the restaurants you hanker after have good lunch deals. Look in the newspapers for specials.

For more information, consult the NYC & Company at www.nycvisit.com

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