The Hagia Sophia was once of the first places we w...

The Hagia Sophia was once of the first places we went to here in Istanbul and it was quite an experience. It was nice to see the there was serios effort being made to restore the hidden mosaics and frescoes but that being said, it is a construction site with jack hammering and chiseling distracting from what otherwise would probably be a magical experience. It really is a stretch to call it a museum because it was so bare and devoid of artifacts and with so little information to go by that you almost have to go with the overpriced and hard-selling tour guides who almost do not take no for an answer. They will offer to have you skip the line for what i recall was about TK150 on top of the entrance fee. One guys said that he didn't ned a guide because his female companion liven here in Istanbul for years to which the tour guide replied that that isn't as good as the 5 years he spent studying history. That was a bit tacky.
The only other option was the audio tour headsets for TK30 which were useless as they didn't work right and was so haphazardly put togther that it was difficult to follow and understand.