Xi'an day , October 19, Wednesday

We got up and decided to wander the city.  We crossed under the big traffic circle below the Bell Tower and headed into an open area with stores and businesses surrounding it.  I was really hungry, bordering on hungry, and was not happy with the choices that we saw.  So we walked thru this area into the hutongs around it.  And by some miracle, came upon the Muslim Quarter.  

This was some kind of walnut roaster, at the base was a propane fired flame and on top usually some kind of heat holding material and then the walnuts.  All stirred around and around by what looked like a ceiling fan blade.  What became of the nuts after this is unknown.  However, there were many places making sweets with various nut meats in them so perhaps....

 This is a pomegranate juice squeezer.  The pomegranates here are lighter in color, more yellow than red and smaller.  Juice was available all over the quarter.

 Who is this handsome guy in the background?  A Mysterious stranger, no doubt... None stranger~

This sounded like a jet engine.  The black blocks in the lower left I believe are coal.  This puppy put out some BTU's.  The bucket into which the flame is shooting is filled with water.  You can imagine how hot that wok is!

 This was quite baffling at first, we thought it was pineapple, or some kind of cake.  It actually was sweet rice that was then dipped into a fruit juice glaze and served.

 All us and down the quarter were these kebab stands.  These were skewers of rosemary wood intensely flavored the grilled lamb.

Here is the grade to the quarter.  We only found this as we were leaving the quarter to head to the south end of the walled city.

We went from 1 or 2 people on the street with us to hundreds in about 50 yards!  The streets, already narrow, were cheek by jowl with shops and hawkers of all kinds.  Some selling sweets, some food, some drinks, some snacks, some breads, etc.  

We stopped in a hole in the wall place that if I wasn't so hungry I would never have looked twice at!  The floors haven't been cleaned since Genghis Khan rolled through.  With some observations and pantomime we were able to order some food for lunch.  There is a traditional dish of  broken bits of bread in a bowl and then some meaty broth poured over it.  We got 2 orders of that along with a couple of skewers of grilled meat and a bowl of cold noodles.  It was a Halal place, so the meat was lamb or beef.  I believe it was lamb.  It took us a while to figure out how to get the workers to bring us some broth for the bits of bread that we had torn up.  It seems, that when I ordered at the register I was given a tag and a receipt.  The tag was for the workers to know who needed broth.  Eventually, a guy came by and took our bowls and returned, in what felt like an eon, with 2 bowls of steaming lamb and veggie broth.  Once the bread absorbed the broth it was ready to eat.  It was soooo good.  Just what we needed to sustain us on our wandering.

After eating lunch, we grabbed a little sweetie on the street, a durian flavored puff of some kind.  It looked like an ice cream of some sort, but it was a moochi-like covering over a sort of whipped cream.  Was perfect.  

We ended up wandering south to the wall around the city.  At first, we thought that we would hit the Stele museum, but it closed at 5 and it was about 4, so we settled for a walk on the walls.

This was a dragon head in the fountain inside the entrance to the Stele Museum.  The entry courtyard was quite striking.

This was like walking around in New Orleans, second floor balconies and leafy streets.

We walked a bit east, backtracked and walk west along the south wall.  It was the beginning of dusk and all of a sudden lanterns along the wall lit up and there were lights along the wall on the street sides that lit up as well.  It was really beautiful.  It was close to 6 now, and getting to be full on dark.  There were lots of people up on the wall, not just tourists.  Lots of young people sitting on benches having a discrete cuddle, people riding bikes, electric cars ferrying people to and fro, as well as tourists.  There are only 4 entrances to the wall.  We could back track to the southern one, or keep going to the western one.  Just when I thought we had hit the place where we could get down, it was just another lit up rampart and we had a ways to go.

 Here Bill is walking down the tunnel to climb up the stairs to the top of the wall.

 Inside, thru the tunnel, is a grand courtyard in which performances are done for state visits, holidays, etc.

 Up the stairs to the right, note no hand rails, stairs are steep and narrow.

 On top of the wall are these structures which served at guard posts and look outs

 This is the view looking south outside the walls.  It is a place of high rises and very little charm.

 At dusk, the lights came on.  At first all I noticed were the red lanterns on the top of the wall.  Looking over from the ramparts, we could see that the exterior of the wall, on both sides, was also lit up.

 There were small hotels, bars, restaurants, etc all along the inner edge of the wall....until you got further west, then it became strictly residential, and seemed quite uninhabited in places.

 The lights over the city were really beautiful.  The structures on the wall particularly so (below)

After full on dark, it was really hard to see, in fact, Bill put the flashlight on his phone on.  Bicycles were going by, albeit, not very fast, but in the dark, they were tough to see sometimes.  About half this time we were growing tired of walking, the entire wall is 14 kilometers long, and we had covered about 5 or 6 k at this point.  Time to get dinner.

We exit the wall and have to dodge traffic coming from 3 directions to cross on to a sidewalk.  Sort of defeats the purpose of walking the wall.  I was starting to get hungry and really needed to eat.  We did not see anything that looked interesting.  Until....

 We find this steak house.  Deal done and done.

 The place was relatively empty but it was, unknown to us at the time, a set menu type of place.  You chose your steak and then all these other dishes come first...Escargot, croissants, garlic bread, soup, fruit juice, salads, etc.  It was the meal that never stopped, AND it was quite cheap.  Now the steak was not the best..just so you don't make reservations for flight ....

We were quite stuffed and took a cab home.  The next day, Wendy arrives.