When we entered the giant walls surrounding the marble palace, the scenery changed almost instantly; gone was the golden brown sandstone brick, gone were the dusty roads, gone were the dozens upon hundreds of people...
In their place, polished white marble and colored terracotta gave the area color and life, while the brick road was swept clean and spotless; the plants around us gave the dry area some more life, but the absence of people around this road was a stark contrast to what we had seen moments before.
That wasn't to say there was completely no one inside the palace walls, but compared to before... it was almost a ghost town; a clean, beautiful, but empty palace that had no real soul to it, what with the lack of living, breathing people inhabiting its walls.