Day 526 In Beijing: Blue Tour In Cappadocia, Goreme Open Air Museum.

Just imagine living in these homes.

The last stop on our tour was to the Goreme Open Air Museum.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures here because we were pretty tired and there are a lot of churches.

Most the churches in this area don’t allow pictures inside so we only have pictures of the outside.

There are many paintings, and frescoes, on the Church walls and they are quite impressive.

However, many of them have the saints eyes scratched out through vandalism.

Also, the Muslim religion forbids the depiction of the human form, or icons, and supposedly they were afraid of the “evil eye.”

Considering how old these paintings are, and that they are not from the dominant religion in the area, it is rather amazing they are in the shape they are in.

We actually made one more stop, after the Goreme Open Air Museum and stopped by a Jewelry store.

Jill and I had wanted to buy her a ring and we wanted our guide, Sukru, to help us with the bargaining and make sure we weren’t ripped off.

We bought a ring, with a Zultanite stone, and it was gorgeous.

I’ll post some pictures of it, in the near future, as it is a stone that changes color with light (up to 6 colors that we’ve seen so far) and is only mined in Turkey.