Life from the Couch

It's a funny thing, living on a couch. Especially when it's a friend's. As you know, I spent the majority of my sleep time in London on friend's couches. With the ridiculous cost of living in a city like London, in a country like the UK, remaining rentless is not such a bad idea, especially if your plan is to save money in a short space of time for future travels. And most of the time friends are more than happy to oblige. There comes a point where you do get a sense of guilt, however, in spending anything more than a few days on any one couch - whether or not your offers of reparation are cheerily deemed unneccessary. And so I again would like to thank, for their lovely hospitality and their comfortable couches: Nic (and the East Finchley crew), Globetrotter Inns hostel, Ash, Em and Josh, Steven and Jen, and Tom and John.
In a similar fashion, CouchSurfing provides another great way to save money on accommodation whilst travelling. Both Lee and I have used this wonderful service probably at least 20 times each and as such have saved at least $1000 a piece. We both can't recommend it highly enough to anyone we come across on our travels. Obviously the money-saving aspect of CSing is great for extended travels or stretched budgets (or both), but the real advantage to this style of travel - as opposed to staying in a hostel with other similarly detached travellers - is the local touch. In most cases you are staying with a local to the area (or an expat similarly ingrained in the culture) who can provide you with so much more detail and insight into the local customs and history than you could ever get from a guide book or the Saturday night hostel pub crawl. In general you can share meals and stories together, and some even have the time to show you around town and indicate points of interest, many of which you would never have seen at a superficial glance.
In short, couch surfing, whether it be a friend's sofa or a stranger's, is an extremely useful and rewarding tool whilst you are travelling. But just remember that you are staying in someone else's house for free, so be careful not to step on anyone's toes...