Last Tuesday evening I said goodbye to many old and new friends in downtown Memphis at the closing party of yet another great Laptop Institute conference hosted by the wonderful folks at Lausanne Collegiate School (more thoughts on that later). After a couple hours of sleep my wife and I caught “The City of New Orleans”, made famous by the Arlo Guthrie ballad of the same name, and thoroughly enjoyed a pleasant and very economical seven hour journey down the river to New Orleans. I must give kudos to the folks at AMTRAK for their service. I hope that as flying continues to become more of a hassle, train travel will experience a resurgence across North America.

This was my first experience in New Orleans and didn’t really know what to expect. After three years of Beale Street in Memphis, I figured much of the same except with a jazz feel. To say that New Orleans didn’t match that expectation is an understatement.

Despite being ravaged by Katrina just a few years ago, my experience in New Orleans was amazing. In fact, expect for a couple of derelict buildings that were pointed out by tour guides (which could have been the result of any variety of reasons) there was no evidence of the destruction visible in the downtown area. I will admit that we deliberately avoided the Katrina Tours available (we wanted to return home with good memories), but Katrina certainly was not on prominent display.

New Orleans was nothing short of amazing. From the dinner cruise on the Natchez and the Swamp Tour put on by the wonderful folks at Westwego Adventures to the romance of the French Quarter and the freak show of Bourbon Street, this is a city like no other.

The other part of New Orleans that was refreshing was to be disconnected for five days. In his keynote at LI, Scott Klososky spoke of the need to get “off the grid” to refresh. Well, I took his advice and for five days there was no blogging, twittering, emailing or even checking the weather online. I was completely disconnected from the web, and it was good (I think my wife enjoyed it too!!).

More on my thoughts on another great Laptop Institute later.

tags: technology, education, whipple, learning, laptopinstitute, scott klososky, new orleans