Well, I wasn't sure what you meant because Intuition always seemed obvious to me.
I can look at a situation with my Thinking and say, "Here is what I can say about this... and this is ALL I can say about it." Everything is sifted and categorized and labeled in terms of probability -- the weighted chances of each statement being true.
So the presence of Intuition has been so obvious for me. It says, "Yes, I know that that's all you can fairly say about it... but you know what your gut is telling you the truth is."
That's more Ni to me -- the deep-seated hunch that leaps the gap that my Thinking rightfully points out as shaky ground and refuses to put its weight on. That's how I recognized it: Because I would fight internally over acting on the knowledge. Thinking screams, "No, you can't trust it THAT much," and Intuition yells back, "Stop being a scaredy cat -- you KNOW what the truth is."
Ne is more the "leapfrog" function, where I ping off one idea to the next like a pinball, taking new twists and turns with each step. Thinking demands a more linear line; Ne seeks to "ping" off each new concept, sensation, experience, or whatever, in any sort of direction as long as there is SOME sort of connection there.