TRAVELER @ nationalgeographic.com

To walk. For most people, it’s the simplest, most boring movement imaginable, conquered before age two and never thought of again. But to walk in New York City and look around, and listen, and notice—that’s different. And sometimes sublime. The sidewalks are where the hidden beauty of the city comes out—less showy than giant museums and sky-high buildings, but the simple kind of beauty that makes it my favorite place in the world.

I don’t have to go far to see it; I can just walk from my apartment to the bookstore. Start out at Tiemann and Riverside and head south. Watch out for the elderly Chinese Tai Chi practitioner who circles Sakura Park, walking backwards, silent, content in every deliberate movement of toe, foot, leg, hip. Go down the stairs to Riverside Church with its soaring angel lit gold at evening, trumpeting out against the sacred indigo night. Look across Riverside Drive—see the white-haired woman in her magenta coat and hot pink beret. Her black chow chow stops walking—obstinate—and rolls over on his back. Slowly, slowly, leaning on her cane, the pink lady reaches down and scratches the waiting belly. The dog hops up; they move on.

Move east on 122nd Street, past the theological seminary (ivy-covered, old and dear). South again on Broadway past Columbia and Barnard, pushing through the crowds of tank-topped girls and gospel-singing panhandlers outside Ollie’s Noodle Shop. Past the towers of oranges, nectarines, cantaloupes at West Side Market. Listen to the serenades of the Nigerian tenor picking out asparagus for dinner. Go a few more blocks to where last spring the pavement screamed “I Love You!” in florescent pink spray paint every time you crossed 107th Street, and the Indian man at the flower stand once handed out red roses and smiled on a rainy Tuesday at 8 a.m.

Keep going, looking at the people around you. The tired nannies bent down with the weight of someone else’s pretzel-sucking baby. The packs of ecstatic, freed schoolchildren running at break-neck speed to ice cream trucks. The jaunty gray woman, four feet and five inches tall only if you add her high heels and felt hat, putting one foot in front of the other undaunted, in the excruciating effort to move forward. The dogs: peeking out of handbags, waiting patiently outside the grocer’s, trotting down the sidewalk with tennis balls in their mouths. A steadfast glorious golden retriever begs his owner for a garlicky bite at the patio of Meridiana Restaurant.

Finally, come to the discount carts outside Gryphon Bookshops at 80th Street. Look around at the $1 specials before you go inside and climb the rickety stairs to the dusty, magical smell of shelves and shelves stuffed to the brim with tattered, beloved books. But when you’re done, go back out. To the city stuffed with its own stories, its own rhythms, its own songs. Any day on the sidewalks, it’s a place of a lifetime.