Finding ourselves at a Waffle House diner in Houston Texas at 1am in the morning on the way from London to Mexico turned out to be such an experience.

We had a mammoth 48 hour, 4 flight marathon journey from London through the US to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. After traveling for about 24 hours and being totally exhausted, Elysia and I arrived at Houston International.

Upon realizing that our bags hadn’t arrived and freaking out that all our posessions were lost forever, we decided to kill the 8 hour stopover by making our way to where ever was still open at midnight and sitting down for a meal then falling asleep at our table for a few hours.

We saw that the local Best Western had a 24 hour restaurant next door so jumped in a cab and set off.

Neither of us have been to the southern USA, and I’ll admit that some unfortunate stereotypes lurked in the dark corners of my mind about Texas. More specifically, we both agreed that the seemingly old Waffle House restaurant we arrived at definitely looked like the kind of place where armed robberies or mass shootings are likely to take place at 1am.

With trepidation we made our way inside.

“How Y’all Doin? Welcome To Waffle House!”

** Abort Negative Stereotype **

The smell of immense fast food grease, the old african american manager behind the counter singing soul music with far too much gusto for 1am in the morning, and the enormous waffles with ice cream passing back and forth across the vintage steel counter tops created a feel that was so pleasingly southern it made us forget momentarily the unfortunate 8 time-kill we faced.

Before long I was served my grease filled bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, whose level of trans fats and cholesterol would have made it too much of a health risk to appear on the menu in certain places. Unfortunately, pleasure is not a nutritional statistic, otherwise this meal would have had the heart foundation seal of approval. Delicious in all it’s greasy goodness, washed down with a tantalizingly sweet chocolate milkshake, the Waffle House didn’t fail to deliver.

We hung around for another hour after eating, just listening to the owner discussing his favorite soul tunes andstopping to bust into song at random intervals, one waitress talking with a local business owner in Spanish, and diners of various demographics sauntering in and out enjoying early breakfasts and waffle stacks well into the early morning.

The whole time, Elysia and I couldn’t get the smiles off our faces. We finally left, content and reminded of that underrated phenomenon of travel: Unexpected Moments Of Awesome.