We're back in France, where we've had another experience that makes it fun to travel without a plan.  As so often, we headed for a particular dot on our road map because we were intrigued by the name: Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises (Colombey-the-Two-Churches.) 

The town, when we reached it, looked hardly big enough to support one church, let alone two.  But it had a little hotel with flowers in the window boxes.  When we'd carried in our bags we got back in the car and went to find the two churches.  One Catholic, one Evangelical?  we'd wondered.

When I wrote in April about the padlocks on a bridge in Paris, our friend Joan emailed to say she'd noticed the same romantic tradition in Salzburg.  So we kept our eyes open and sure enough, we saw these little "Together Forever" tokens in Freiburg . . .

From Heidelberg John and I headed to the Rhine -- and so of course did the Neckar, with its overflow of water.  We'd had a notion of driving north along the  road that hugs the west side of the Rhine, and did this until the first yellow UMLEITUNG ("Detour") sign sent us up into the woods and vineyards high above: the road ahead was under water. 

After a few miles, the detour signs led us back to the river, only to point us uphill again around another flooded stretch of the shore road.

Thinking that the road on the opposite bank might be better, we took a ferry across to Lorch.

June 1

Well, we have the answer . . . We've been saying each morning since we arrived in England April 1st, waking to yet another rainy day, where is all this water going to go?

It was going here to the Neckar. 

This was the scene from our balcony this morning.  Last night, the row of trees stood on the bank of the Neckar, with a lawn, flowerbeds and a broad pedestrian/bicycle lane where  John and I strolled (under umbrellas: we haven't taken a walk without these on the entire trip.)