Our guidebook calls it the Bridge of Fannies because there are so many people crowded on it that at first all you glimpse is a sea of posteriors .

Make your way to the front of the span, though, and you’ll be rewarded with a view of Petite Venise, a neighborhood of colorful houses and cascading geraniums.

Canals were threaded through Colmar long ago, siphoning water from the river so farmers could barge their wares into town.

Now ducks ply these waters, and tourists photograph them — and everything else. How could they (I) not?