they walked past all kinds of neat old buildings and monuments , past a white place that looked like a wedding cake all illuminated with search lights , past all kinds of rubble that might someday be a tourist attraction but right now looked like an inner-city quarry , past another quarry , through piazzas with nobody in them , gloomy , deathly places at that time of night , vast open spaces with statues to the dead all around , until at last they arrived at a decadent little smelly side street plugged full of semi-naked , nubile young women in miniskirts .