Snow fleas & Missiles? in Erzurum...

We have scoped the palandoken mountain and come across a few projects for the next few days. The crew went in to town after our day on the hill and spent some time at the newly developed Erzurum ice rink. Thanks to Phil Tifo and the Turkey Tourism board for making this trip possible.

Little villa on the resort. Weve been told that this has been passed down through the same family for 500 years.

Day 2.. Instead of fresh snow we get 400 billion snow fleas blown in from, "bug-aria"... good one Short.

WTF ? Pretty sure these are not planes.. Were are boarding Iraq..

Come to Turkey to go ice skating? A blast, even with rounded blades of glory and buckles that unstrap themselves every 2 minutes.

Shorty killing it on a pair of high end Turkish skates.

Rasman with a creepy look. Nice sticker on the Turkish hockey stick, this kid rocks.

Marius giving us the Blue Steel.

Russians fans at the peak of Palandoken.

Istanbul, Turkey - The Grand Bizarre...

After being awake travelling for over 35 hours we descended upon Turkey and made the most of a down day. We rolled into Istanbul and soaked in some culture before leaving on our first mission to the Palandonken resort in Erzurum tomorrow morning.

Tourism Turkey had it dialed for us. 50 people waiting for cabs and these vans out side of the airport, yet we get 2 of them for 5 of us. 1 van for our bags, one for our exhausted, smelly canadian bodys.

The legendary blue mosk. Probably one of the craziest man made things our crew has seen yet. Not too much blue about it though..

Sagliginiza!

...i think thats what you say when you do that..

We went to check out the Mall near the hotel we are staying at and found this little shred shop that for some reason sells tennis rackets. And Marius's pro model jacket!

Marius is big in Turkey! Pleasing the fans with some very facebookable photos..

We met the turkish santa! That smile was not going anywhere and it was making this guys soo much money. Everytime we walked by him later in the day he yelled "HELLO CANADA!"

The Grad Bizarre was a heeaavy culture shock for the crew.

No marked prices. Everything in this place is about haggling. You ask how much, they ask "how much you think"?, then its a fast paced price argument until one side caves.

These fellas seemed like our best turkish friends until we found out they marked up the turkish delight we bought by 200%..

Rasman building the turkish fan base.

Wicked times in Istanbul. Off to the east to do what we came here to do! See you in 2 weeks crazy city.