I landed in New Orleans last night.

On the flight, I was nervous. It's not every day, after all, that you fly back for a second visit to the city that so captivated you the first time around, that you quit your job, gave up your apartment, and booked a return flight as soon as you got home. Talk about big pressure for the second date, right?

I worried that the magic would be gone, that the months since my first visit had intensified some good memories to the level of fantasy. I worried, since last time I saw the city mostly through a rose-colored filter - in the person of a French Quarter bartender so in love with New Orleans that anyone in his presence couldn't help but get excited, too - that without that filter, on my own, things might not be the same. I worried that the city would simply feel sticky and slightly seedy - instead of sticky, seedy, and special.

I was in an iPod trance at the baggage carousel when I felt (rather than heard) the crowd around me turning and murmuring. I looked up in time to see a guy on one knee, and a girl laughing, crying, blushing, nodding, and covering her face all at once. The crowd burst into applause, the happy couple walked hand in hand out of the airport, and the rest of us stood waiting for our luggage, smiling at nothing, the happiest baggage claim crowd I'd ever seen.

I had my reminder: before I even got into the airport shuttle, I knew everything was going to be fine.