Dennis...this weekend I am going to overcome my travel anxiety and one day walk to Bosphorus (1 hour?) and then walk south along it and have a good lunch somewhere, and then walk back. The other day I will walk to Metro and take Metro in towards center and see the sights you describe. I am here now partly because Wife in Suburbia and I are doing much of the work from the US end on organizing a workshop to compare the San Andreas and North Anatolian faults...so we will be back in August for the workshop, and Wife assumes that the U.S. attendees will want to eat at least one dinner in the center...although how we get there is unclear (shared taxis? minivans?). ITU is some distance north of the Marmara coast so is farther from the fault than is old Istanbul...and there is no sedimentary basin such as is under LA...so ground motions up here in a NAF quake might not be bad...
Chris