We had originally planned a custom walking tour around this area today, well before I hurt my leg. We had already managed to get a few stops in along this walk earlier in the week (Jardin du Luxembourg, the Church of Saint Sulpice, and Shakespeare and Company) but thought we’d give the other stops on the walk a go.

After our breakfast, we got on the metro at the stop we’d used all week (Chateau Rouge on line 4 in the 18th arrondissement) and took it to the St-Michel stop in the 6th arrondissement.

We wound our way through the narrow streets in the Saint Germain des Prés neighbourhood in the Latin Quarter until we arrived at L’Hotel where Oscar Wilde died on Rue des Beaux-Arts.

From here, we were on our way to Pub Saint Germain  but not for a drink or pub meal. Soon after we turned down Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, there was a close that led to yet another narrow cobbled street so we went there. I immediately recognized it as a location on a walking tour I did back in 2003.

There was a method to my madness for slipping through here to the back side of the pub. High on the wall, there’s a plaque of interest.

The plaque reads:

Ce passage fut un haut lieu
de la Revolution Français
~~~
Au No 8 etait installee l’imprimerie
dans laquelle Marat
fit paraitre son journal
L’ami du peuple en 1793
~~~~
Au No 9 se trouvait l’atelier du
charpentier SCHMIDT qui fabriqua
la premiere guillotine en 1792
~~~~
Au no 20 (emplacement
de l’actuelle statue)
DANTON habita de 1789 jusqu’a son
arrestation le 30 Mars 1794

translated to English using Google Translate:

This passage was a hotbed
of the French Revolution
~~~
In No. 8 was located in printing
in which Marat
did seem his diary
The Friend of the People in 1793
~~~
In No. 9 was the workshop
SCHMIDT carpenter who manufactured
the first guillotine in 1792
~~~
At No. 20 (location
of the current statue)
DANTON lived from 1789 until his
arrested Mar 30, 1794

Our walk did cover some of the same territory as earlier in the week, but we did things a wee bit differently. This time we went inside the Church of Saint Sulpice.

In order to get to the catacombs, we had to walk by the Jardin du Luxembourg again, so this time we went along the opposite side.

By now it was raining a bit harder and we discovered that the umbrella we had brought with us today was in worse shape than the one we had the day we went to the Eiffel Tower and the wind blew it inside out many times in the sudden storm that blew up. Anyway, this one had a broken rib and the fabric hung limp when it wasn’t blown back on top of itself so there wasn’t a lot of room for two people.

Since the catacombs didn’t open until 2:00 pm, we decided to hop the metro back to the hotel, change umbrellas, ditch the camera bag and just each carry a camera use the toilet then go back out. After all, we each had two 5-day unlimited use passes and intended to get our money’s worth out of them.

After our brief pit stop, we hopped back on the metro and this time rode all the day to the Denfert-Rochereau stop which is at The Catacombs.

The queue stretched around the corner so we thought we would join the end and wait since it still wasn’t opening time. Well, we walked almost all the way around the block before we found the end!

Standing in the rain, umbrella or not to wait at least an hour wasn’t my idea of a good time, so we walked around the circle  before going back to the fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg for a selfie by the fountain where Don took a photo of me earlier.

On up Rue St Michel to Rue Soufflot and over to the Pantheon. We had seen a dome covered with scaffolding from many vantage points throughout the city and unfortuntely, this was the one. This building is gorgeous when it’s not wrapped up.

By now we were getting thirsty so it was time to head to the Auld Alliance for something to quench our thirst.

It wasn’t this dark when Don took this picture of me outside the pub but definitely overcast and raining.

After a few pints and laughs with the bar maid, we made our way to our usual restaurant for a bite of supper before heading to the metro to go back to the hotel. This time, we thought we’d check out the Rue de Bac stop since it appeared to be much closer than the one at Concorde we had been using all week. The added bonus here was, we found a Nicholas shop where we could get a bottle of champagne!

We stopped in, bought a bottle of Canard-Duchêne (the same champagne we drank in London) and one of Armagnac (similar to Cognac) that came in a bottle shaped like the Eiffel Tower.

Rue de Bac was so much more convenient from getting from the heart of the city to our hotel, we kicked ourselves for not looking into it sooner.