Funchal is an odd port in that it is nothing more than a quaint little seaside town with nothing to truly offer except the usual array of souvenirs, photo opportunities and statues of people that you don’t recognize, with name plates in Portuguese (this does not help with the recognition side of things!), it has however always had a greater significance to the flagship. You see, on the standard flagship route, our stop at Funchal is the last port before Fort Lauderdale.
It’s only ever a partial day call, arriving at 8am and departing at 4:30pm. It’s usually raining. This time however, providence favoured us, for only the second time in 22 years (according to our travel guide) we were there for the annual Flower Festival. In all honesty I was starting to think the Funchal Flower Festival was a myth, we always seemed to have just missed it or come just before it. To arrive in the middle of it was a fitting ending to what has been a wonderful (if slightly complicated) journey.
The old town square was one big party, every kind of flower you could imagine, including some of the largest birds of paradise I’ve ever seen, seemed to compete for your attention. Dancers and drummers and mimes and caricature artists plied their trades along the crowded cobblestones and from somewhere off in a corner near the church you could hear the strains of a gypsy guitarist providing the soundtrack (the same song that opens Chocolat and which spurs a huge smile to my face because it was one of the tunes that the Doc Severson band played while they were on board). The atmosphere was so thick in the air that it seemed you could breathe it in as a scent all its own, like Victoria combined with Covent Garden combined with France.
Ultimately, before I went running back to the ship to get my camera (only to discover it had been in my purse the whole time), I ended up sitting with a friend of mine sipping honeyed-tea at a sidewalk cafe watching all the people go by, and trying to make some sense of what they were saying, and failing miserably because I can’t even attempt to translate Portuguese, but I like to think they were talking about happy things.
It was a short shuttle ride back to the ship (at least this time there was a shuttle, previous to this it’s been a very long walk to the city centre), and I stood with the rest on the aft-deck, listening to the cruise director’s announcement:
Ladies and Gentleman, welcome back. It’s hard to believe it, but it’s time for our final sail away party, as you all know this has been our last port of call before most you will leave us in Fort Lauderdale, please join us to bid farewell to Portugal and celebrate a wonderful journey together.
And so it is that we put Funchal to our stern and steam outwards on the Atlantic, from here on in , we play with a very specific goal in mind, the goal of keeping a lot of tired, homesick people happy for another seven days. But under that, thrumming through the whole ship like a heartbeat is one single thought:
We’re going home….