Istanbul, day 3 - Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia Museum - skip it!! Zero stars out of ten from me. The museum is made up of two floors, one consists ONLY of video recordings talking about history of the building in the style of bad school video aids. You literally go from room to room, watch videos projected in the walls and listen to the commentary through the provided headphones. I gave up after the second room and asked to be let out of there. They offered to walk me directly to the second part of the experience - the actual artifacts collection. That was more interesting, but pretty small and not worth the time or the price. Here are a few pictures from the artifacts exhibit:
A small collection of Russian icons:
An Armenian silver arm for a relic (empty:
An explanation on how Russian icons ended up there:
One of the metal icons:
And that's about it.
Hagia Sophia
Ignore the skip-the-line tickets - the only line they have is for the security check and you can't skip it no matter which group you are coming with. There are no tickets, so there is no additional line to get any tickets. On December 25 the security line took us about 25 min to get through.
Women need to have their heads to be covered. There are a few vendors selling headscarves outside of the masque and then another one after the security. The prices outside of the walls are $1.50 to $10, so no need to bother to buy something beforehand. If you are wearing a hoody just pull it up, that's enough. We didn't know that, so both Natasha and me got scarfs. I wasn't sure how exactly to wrap it, do I need to hide all the hair? only part? so the saleswoman helped us to do it. Turnes out the hairline needs to be covered, but on the sides it's ok to have some hair showing.
Inside one is supposed to take off the shoes. Had to take a picture of the number on the cubby to know where to look for them afterwords :))
We were ones of the last tourists that were allowed to the main floor. In couple weeks the second floor (the balcony) will reopen, but the main floor will permanently close to those that are not there to pray.
Maria is hiding behind the curtain:
An angel - one out of four still has a face:
A small collection of Russian icons:
An Armenian silver arm for a relic (empty:
An explanation on how Russian icons ended up there:
One of the metal icons:
And that's about it.
Hagia Sophia
Ignore the skip-the-line tickets - the only line they have is for the security check and you can't skip it no matter which group you are coming with. There are no tickets, so there is no additional line to get any tickets. On December 25 the security line took us about 25 min to get through.
Women need to have their heads to be covered. There are a few vendors selling headscarves outside of the masque and then another one after the security. The prices outside of the walls are $1.50 to $10, so no need to bother to buy something beforehand. If you are wearing a hoody just pull it up, that's enough. We didn't know that, so both Natasha and me got scarfs. I wasn't sure how exactly to wrap it, do I need to hide all the hair? only part? so the saleswoman helped us to do it. Turnes out the hairline needs to be covered, but on the sides it's ok to have some hair showing.
Inside one is supposed to take off the shoes. Had to take a picture of the number on the cubby to know where to look for them afterwords :))
We were ones of the last tourists that were allowed to the main floor. In couple weeks the second floor (the balcony) will reopen, but the main floor will permanently close to those that are not there to pray.
Maria is hiding behind the curtain:
An angel - one out of four still has a face: