At Bontà Più in Balestrate you’ll find excellent quality Sicilian and Italian products (like cheese, bread, meat, meats, olives, olive oil, etc.). You’ll find Bonta Più here. There are also several supermarkets in the area:

In the coastal town of Balestrate: Sisa, Conad and Cento piazze

In Castellammare del Golfo: MD

In Alcamo: Lidl and Conad

In Carini: Auchan in shopping mall Poseidon

In Partinico: Lidl and Ard

Public transportation is an alternative, but keep in mind that it will take quite some extra time tot get to Palermo by bus or train and that the last bus and train to Balestrate and Castellammare del Golfo leaves at 07:30 pm from Palermo. We therefore advise you to drive to Monreale and to take a bus or taxi from there to Palermo (see car routes) We can also organize a transfer from and to Balestrate, Trappeto and Castellammare del Golfo.

When you park your car in an area marked with a blue line, you either have to pay or use a parking disc (signs will tell you which applies). If the parking space is marked with white lines, you can usually park for free. However, always pay attention to the signs! These indicate whether you have to pay, and if so, how much, or how long you can park with a parking disc. If you have to pay and there’s no parking meter in the area, then you’ll have to buy parking cards (schede parcheggio) at an edicola (where newspapers and magazines are sold) or a bar (NB not all bars sell theses cards). These scratch cards are valid for one hour, so if you want to park for more than an hour, you’ll have to scratch more cards, one for each additional hour. The first card needs to show the time and date you’ve parked your car and every additional card should be scratched using the time of the previous card + 1 hour. So, if you park for 4 hours, starting at 09:00 am, you need to have 4 scratch cards on your dashboard (visible from outside), one saying 09:00 am, the next one 10:00 am, the third one 11:00 am and the last one 12:00 am (which will be valid until 01:00 pm). Now isn’t that a simple system?!

Please note: every town and village has its own scratch cards so you can’t use scratch cards from one town in another town!

A yellow line means no parking and if the parking spaces aren’t marked at all, it’s usually free parking.

The Sicilians often do whatever they like, so don’t just follow their example but look at the parking signs…

You can find the timetables of bus company Russo here. The website is in Italian, so to be clear, you can check the departure times underneath “Scopri i nostri orari e le nostre tariffe”, where partenza is the town from where you’d like to take the bus and arrivo is the town/city you’d like to go to. You can buy tickets in the bus.

Visit the Treniatalia website for train schedules.

In Balestrate there’s a market on Monday morning (close to the train station). In Alcamo there’s a market on Wednesday morning and in Castellammare del Golfo there’s one on Saturday morning.