Welcome to our home
When you stay with us, we want to do more than show you your room, hand over the keys and point you towards the beach.
We want to share our Sicily with you.
The places we love. The restaurants where we eat. The stories we have discovered. Views worth stopping for. And perhaps a few places you would never find without us.
Because Sole Siciliano is more than a business to us.
It grew out of a meeting in Turkey, a shared dream and the decision to change our lives.
Today, we would love to share a little of that life with you.
Petr & Alenka ❤️
B&B Sole Siciliano – Castellammare del Golfo
VIVA LA VITA 🇮🇹
Turkey, September 2019.
That is where it all began. I was from Kolín, Alenka from Budapest. A company holiday, a chance meeting… Neither of us imagined that seven years later we would be living in Sicily, running our own B&B and saying ‘I do’ here. It was not without obstacles. I had been married for two years, and Alenka was in an eight-year relationship that was no longer working. Had we been happy, naturally none of this would have happened. But I had a feeling that Alenka was different. When I came home, I admitted everything as soon as I walked through the door and said I no longer wanted to be married. Before Alenka reached home from Brno, where we had said goodbye, my wife had already called her. Some men may deny everything or have affairs; I prefer to be completely straightforward. That honesty brought a few more obstacles later on, too. Our partners were reluctant to move out of our homes, so we met halfway in Brno. There were not many hotels there that we had not stayed in ourselves.
Our next test was COVID. We could not see each other for three months. After the first wave, we planned to drive to Spain for a holiday. Then Alenka found an article about houses being sold for one euro in Calabria, and we spontaneously changed our plans and headed south.
We saw an empty St Mark’s Square in Venice and took a gondola ride. In Rome, the Vatican and St Peter’s Square were deserted too: hardly anyone was travelling at the time. We continued to Reggio Calabria, where people were talking, singing and dancing, without masks or restrictions. We loved it. The one-euro house never happened, but we gained experience and learned how that process works.
The following year, we went away for five weeks. Working remotely meant we could work while travelling, explore Calabria and look for somewhere to live one day. Whenever we visited Italy, we deliberately stayed in towns we had never seen before. By now, we have travelled through practically the whole country. During that holiday in Calabria, we made three trips to Sicily and fell in love above all with its people, but also its extraordinary scenery, history and food. Food mattered especially to us. As former nutrition advisers, we had often struggled to find products without preservatives and additives. Here, everything felt fresh and natural.
That was how our dream became a goal: to find a place in Sicily. At first, we imagined one property to live in and another to rent out.
At first, it was only a DREAM…
In November 2023, we made the big decision to spend the rest of our lives in Sicily. I was changing jobs—or rather, I had lost my source of income. My pride would not let me depend on Alenka, so I announced that I would drive buses for Prague’s public transport company. Alenka asked, ‘Why not drive a bus in Palermo?’ 🙂 The next day, our estate agent had an exclusive agreement to sell my house. There was no turning back. In early January, we went to experience winter here and choose an area to live in and find a commercial property. We first looked around Carini and Palermo, but something was missing in each town. They seemed to come alive only during the tourist season. We wanted somewhere to sit down, walk along the beach and buy groceries all year round. On our final day, we discovered Trapani, and that settled it: life continued here outside the season. We just did not want to live right in the city.
In April, we returned to look for a property in that area: south of Trapani, below Mount Erice, around Valderice. Nothing felt quite right. We already had a buyer for our house in the Czech Republic, so we needed to find something. We almost paid a deposit on a place we knew was not for us. Then we spotted an advertisement for a guesthouse in Castellammare. Within a week, we flew over, stayed there for a week to get a feel for the place and agreed the terms. Our Italian—Sicilian—chapter had begun. We have been in Sicily since 15 July 2024, although the move was not simple. We had to leave our house in Kolín by mid-July, but the previous owner could not hand over the guesthouse until October because she already had bookings for the season. So we tried two rental homes as well. We even spent fourteen months in a villa with a sea view, 300 metres from the beach. Yet it still did not feel right. Today, we have finally found a home we are completely happy with.
For me, Castellammare del Golfo is Sicily’s most picturesque seaside town. It combines mountains and sea, with both Trapani and Palermo airports roughly half an hour away by car. There is no nearby volcano disrupting flights, and it is a very safe part of Sicily. With around 15,000 residents outside the peak season, the town has good year-round services and a wonderful choice of restaurants and shops in summer.
Our beginnings here
We started working in tourism without knowing the language, without local contacts and without experience of running a business here. Alenka did, however, study hospitality and tourism and spent many years as managing director of Ticketportal Hungary, so she brought experience in management and accounting.
I have spent my working life in sales. Communication, years of experience in network marketing and learning to work with social media have given me a different set of skills. Driving feels like the most natural thing in the world to me, so I contribute other practical strengths to our business too. You will not find us on Booking.com: we were there for one day solely for verification and credibility. Our personal approach, recommendations and returning guests allow us to fill our rooms directly. Please contact us by email or phone.
After almost seven years of living and working together around the clock, our relationship naturally reached another milestone: OUR WEDDING.
We could not marry at the embassy in Rome because we have different nationalities. As residents of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, we married on 4 October 2026 in the town’s castle, where weddings are not normally held, and celebrated in the famous village of Scopello. Incidentally, when we went to Rome for the documents, we understood practically everything people said. Here in Sicily, standard Italian is only part of the conversation!
Having travelled so much and stayed in dozens of hotels, we know what we enjoy and appreciate. One thing that makes a stay with us special is personal attention. No collecting keys from a box and finding instructions on a bedside table—quite the opposite.
What we always appreciated most was the owners’ personal approach.
When they showed us where to eat well, what to see, where to book a restaurant, where to swim away from the crowds, rent a car or find good-value clothes and souvenirs—that is exactly what we offer you. Tips for saving on dinner, places to stop on an excursion, and natural thermal pools where you can bathe for free just five kilometres from our B&B.
Of course, the essentials matter too: a comfortable bed, a cosy, clean guesthouse and a varied, good-quality breakfast. Not just a croissant—called a cornetto in Italy—and coffee, which is often the only breakfast offered at Italian B&Bs. With us, you can enjoy a sweet or continental breakfast with plenty of fruit and vegetables, quality cheeses and cold cuts, eggs and yoghurt. We can also adapt breakfast to food intolerances.
We know that guests travelling light appreciate being able to borrow a beach blanket, parasol, chair, towel or umbrella. We also have a cot. A good coffee machine and kettle in the room are welcome touches too.
We believe you will enjoy staying with us, just as so many guests already have. A kind recommendation—or even a return visit—is the greatest reward we could ask for.
Perhaps our story will inspire someone. Moving to another country after fifty, without knowing the language, and starting to make a dream come true is possible at any age. After a thirty-year detour, Alenka returned to the hospitality and tourism field she had studied, and now we run a guesthouse together. It is a reminder that dreams and goals matter at every stage of life. No more ‘someday’ or ‘another time’. Life is here to be celebrated: VIVA LA VITA <3.
Castellammare’s harbour beneath the mountains, with plenty of restaurants and fish straight from the fishermen: the ingredients for a wonderful experience.