Don't go chasing waterfalls between 1 and 3pm

While the thunder storms seemed to rage on all night, we woke up today to a clear and calm morning with another beautiful view out our window. Italy knows how to turn it on!

We decided to make use of the Panda today and are going to head to the Cascade de Marmore and a town called Spoletto. After another great hostel breakfast we packed up the Panda, including our jackets as recommended by the South African who is volunteering at the hostel.

We drove for an hour and a half south to get there. Firstly, along single track farm roads dodging cars, tractors, and dogs and then on the bumpy Italian motorways. Cascade de Marmore is the tallest waterfall in Europe, and also man made. It was firstly made by the Romans to drain the swampy plateau for inhabitation and has subsequently been added to over the years by various people. Currently it

is the outlet for a power generation lake on the plateau. The weird thing about this waterfall is that it is turned on at 10 in the morning, turned off between 1 and 3pm and then at 6pm it is shut off for the night. This is done by shutting the outlet from the lake off to conserve the water at the top.

It took us a while to figure out the parking was free at the waterfall, yay! However you need to buy a ticket to look at the waterfall, boo. The area around the ticket office is full of tacky souvenir stalls selling genuine Italian souvenirs such as Justin Beiber t-shirts! We managed to skip these and joined the people trying to decipher the map of the walking paths. The entrance is where you get the best view of the falls and where you start to feel the fine spray of the water such is the power of the falls! It’s at this point we realised that Italian people walk like they drive, they fill any empty space and they don’t keep to one side. This is fine on a street, but when someone stops to answer their phone on a staircase two people wide it becomes a bit of a problem. We did however make it to the first stop, which was a tunnel to a landing called lovers landing. This was a viewpoint halfway up the waterfall, but both the landing and the people on it were getting completely soaked with spray from the waterfall. It was pretty funny watching everyone huddled at the entrance to the tunnel not wanting to get wet. As we had jackets, no problems for us.

Back into the throng of people and we made it to the top with a beautiful view of the valley and the top of the falls. We tried our first frozen coffee, which was amazing and well needed before we headed back down to the viewpoints at the bottom to watch the waterfall being turned off. It is quite a gradual process, but after about 15 minutes, the waterfall was a trickle of what it had been. So weird to see.

We enjoyed a quick lie down in the sun before getting back in the Panda and off to Spoletto for some lunch and a look around. Spoletto is one of many hilltop towns in this part of Italy and it really did not disappoint. Jo had her favourite pharmacy experience here, using her phrase book to ask for some antihistamines which came out of a tube in the wall! Once we made it to the palace on the top of the hill we had an amazing view of valley. We chose a piazza to have some lunch and enjoy the slow pace of life in and wandered through some of the cute little cobbled streets back to the car. Italy really is amazing.

The scenic route home avoided the motorways and took us though some more hill towns surrounded by vineyards and fields of sunflowers and corn. It was so cool to see. Once back at home we chilled out before dinner. Tonight we had decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the restaurant in town, Serpillo. It was a great decision and it really lived up to its reputation. A perfect way to end another great day in Italy.