Couch Surfing: Hosting or Surfing

Couch Surfing is a great, budget-friendly way to travel and meet awesome people around the world! On the couch surfing website, you set up your profile and indicate if you're willing to host as well as surf. You can restrict your potential company by number of persons, sex, kids, pets and smoking. Your user profile also allows you to write a bio and post pictures to better help others and yourself make decisions. This website can be used for more than just a cheap bed. We use to it to ask locals for their recommendations on restaurants, things to do, bars, and overall places of interest.

Our first experience as surfers was in Rome, Italy. Our host, Manuel, was very friendly and treated us to delicious Italian meals from his parent's restaurant. He gave us a tour of the city, and also came out and participated in a pub crawl with us! We still talk to him today, and even invited him to our wedding! 

We hosted some Couch Surfers this weekend for the first time! It was a great experience. Two young guys from Pennsylvania headed to South America on motorcycles (think motorcycle diaries) needed a warm place to stay. You may be asking yourself, "How do you know if they are creeps or not?!" Well, we don't however, on the couch surfing website you need to establish a conversation and thanks to social media on the World Wide Web, you can find all kinds of information and see lots of pictures. Here is their Facebook page about their adventure! Buena suerte!

Overall, I think Couch Surfing is a fun way to meet people, however, do some research. Get to know the host or surfer. Some hosts just provide you a key to the house and do not interact with you much, while others want to be friends and share fun stories.  It's up to you!