Mixed weather

Today started out cold, dreary and misty rain.  We went on a city tour and the first part was on the bus and we went by some parks, the music festival site and we saw dirt mounds that were from the hairless,blind mole rats that live here. It was interesting. We saw some stork nests and then we got to the upper old town and got off the bus.  We had an excellent guide named Julia who gave a great tour.  The old town is all cobblestones and has the wonderful old shaped buildings and is just a terrific place to wonder and look.  We ended the tour at the lower town square where we were last night and there was a handicraft market there.  They had such wonderful woolen knits and in the cold weather, it is tempting...but realistically we can't use those in Alabama very often so I settled for a new knit cap which I do use!  We ate lunch at one of the famous restaurants, which turned out not to be a good choice for us as they had very little without garlic or onions. We were hoping for the mushroom soup but no such luck.  I ended up with a really good rye bread and Jim got the meat soup which he did not like at all, so it was not on our best list but we at least tried it. The atmosphere was fun.  From there we went to find the Marzipan museum and then we climbed the 10,000 steps (or it felt like it anyway as they were stone, uneven, circular steps) up to the tower of the city hall  The view was worth it though and luckily there were not many other takers so we could take our time going both up and down.  The railing was a thick rope and I hung on for dear life! Then we wandered back toward the old town gate and saw the woolen stalls under the city wall there by the McDonalds that Megan used to frequent.  We went up on the city wall and walked as far as we could go which was nice. By this time, the sun was out and it was much nicer weather, and we enjoyed it.  We came on back to the hotel and went up to the 24th floor where there is a terrace with an outstanding view.  We had a nice included dinner of some sort of chicken with lime and soy sauce which sounded awful to me but was actually very good.