Monday, September 10, 2012

A Quick Note on CouchSurfing.com

First, a definition: CouchSurfing is a website dedicated to helping people travel by connecting them to people who live where they want to go. To "couchsurf" is to borrow someone's extra couch, spare room, or a spot on the floor while you're in the city, thus saving yourself the cost of a hotel or hostel and making a new friend in the process.


If the average experience is even half as nice as our stay at Kayhan and Emrah's in Istanbul, I'm 100% sold. Our hosts were some of the sweetest, most helpful people I've ever met, helping us plan our days and navigate the city, picking us up in the center of Istanbul so we didn't have to take a bus, taking us to an open-air coffeeshop on our last night, and even driving us all the way out to the bus station to make sure we could get tickets to Izmir. When none of our American credit cards went through at the station (don't worry parents, it was just a company thing), he pulled out his card, paid for our tickets and told us to send him the money the next day. That is crazy.


So to summarize, CouchSurfing got us in touch with probably the best, most helpful person in all of Istanbul, and if that's in any way a normal CS experience, I'll be surfing for a long time to come.

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