day3-monkey talk

I brought a monkey with me to the trip. I thought that including him in some of the touristy pictures will help minimize the painful touristiness of them to some extent, and it probably did. I originally found him on a list of kids’ little gifties that came with a kid’s meal from a Japanese McDonald’s several years ago, and got the meal just for the sake of this smiling, crimson monkey with a bunch of crest hair sticking out from his forehead. Now he has something to tell you after his first and great journey in the Old World.

Ahem, is it my turn now? Ah, okay…ahem, I’m the aforementioned monkey. Obviously. Do you like my scarf? Isn’t that nice and colorful? My master made it for me right after I was adopted. I think it fits me really well…without that, I’m pretty plain-looking, you know. Well, I guess I should start talking about the trip now. My master’s nudging me by the elbow.

Well, I’m quite proud of the fact that I’m a monkey who has actually traveled in France. It’s pretty rare in our society of the tailed creatures as you can easily imagine. But, regretfully, most of the places I can clearly recall are either in a train or in a restaurant, because in other places my master was too busy looking at things to pull me out of her shoulder bag where I was cramped together with a travel guide, a water bottle, her camera, her passport, and various other stuff that she carried around with her all the time. It was pretty humiliating and somewhat saddening to see the camera guy being pulled out to the blinding light a second after I saw her hand come in from the opening and hastily expected that she was pulling ME out. Oh, no, I’m not complaining…that is fortunate enough for a monkey (and a plush monkey, on that matter) to be traveling around. But anyway, it’s the trains and restaurants that I can describe to you.

The train to Nice, called TGV, which doesn’t stand for what which should stand for: Tropical Gymnastic Vertebrate (me), ran so smoothly without a single jolt or sway that it felt like it was hovering an inch from the rail, and I didn’t feel any exhaustion after the 6 hour trip. Not that I feel ANY exhaustion—but my master says it didn’t tire her, either. The TGV passed Aix En Provence and Marseille on the way, and arrived at the Nice Ville station around 2pm. Above the rails arched a huge, high glass ceiling with numerous metal supports, which gave the station the feel of a classic greenhouse of a metropolitan London of the 19th century. Not that I’m old enough to have seen it myself, folks—I am pretty well read for a monkey. I hope my keen self-awareness is not tiring you, or is it?

Outside of the station, palm trees and warm, moist air of the seaside greeted us. With its rotary adorned with flowerbed, which probably boasts tropical flora in the right seasons, it looked awfully similar to the coastal resort towns with hot springs in Izu Peninsula, Japan. I can tell you this time that the comparison is based on my own first-handed experience—I have been to one of those resort towns myself…I knew better than, though, to hop thoughtlessly into the supposedly therapeutic water of the hot spring, which could ruin the exceptionally fine touch of my fur. Hmm, where were we? Oh, yeah, the station. Okay, well, that is about all I can tell you about Nice right now, sadly. My master put me back into the shoulder bag, because it was rainy and she didn’t want to get me wet. Considerate, isn’t she? So from now on all I could sense was the sound and the smell of the town. It smelled like rain, with occasional tint of sandwiches and coffee, and it sounded like there was not much going on, which should be a right observation, for it was the Christmas day and almost all the shops should have been closed. Then I heard my master pant, and say in a loud voice, “What!? Be back at five!? So we have to wander around town with nowhere to go and with these heavy backpacks!? No way!!” That got me worried, but my master is tugging me at the tail…looks like she wants to take over the talk. Very well, I suppose I could let her talk—I’m getting thirsty. So long, folks!

Well, that was my monkey. He’s quite eloquent, and he has an ego of the corresponding size. My exclamation that he was talking about at the last moment was when we found a sign on the door of our hostel, saying that the owner will be gone until 5pm and we will not be able to get in to unload ourselves. But it should be in the next chapter(?).


monkey the cafe' lover
Originally uploaded by uBookworm.