I actually feel a bit like apologizing to each of these settlements, as it tries to draw me into the sleep of the place, and I assert my inward ways against it. (I'm off the morning runs for a bit, for several reasons.) It's not like I'm holding off, hoping to fall into the spell of a greater city. The attraction of the large northen cities on these travels is precisely that it's easier to stand apart from things there, and think and work. Even in my home city of a few decades, I've deliberately lived, like many of the full-time residents there, at some distance from the madding crowd and their various comforts. The trick is to appreciate the flame that has drawn the forest to the place, without following the moths, and trying to cast yourself into it on arrival.
And yet -- each place does have a message that it is straining to express to the traveller, and it is possible to listen for those things, the things the place wishes to be known, and to try to understand them.