Meet the founder of Take Me To Europe Tours, our local distinguished archaeologists, and expert tour leaders.
Hi there! My name is Monique Skidmore. I have a passion for ruins and beaches – and preferably ruins perched above beaches! (And I like beach bars too…)
With my partner, Stephen Parker, we divide each year between the Mediterranean, our northern English cottage, and our home in the mountains near Melbourne, Australia.
I’m a globally renowned anthropologist and Myanmar expert, and I’ve conducted deep, immersive fieldwork in several countries. I speak, read, and write four languages. For more information about my story and my career, including my books and TV appearances, see my About Monique page and my entry in Wikipedia.
Through Take Me To Europe Tours, I’ve fostered an expertise that goes beyond tourism. I love to share my experiences and the experiences of my local team that will make you fall in love with the beauty of the people, the landscape, and the food and wine of the hidden parts of Europe.
Internationally renowned Malta-based Welsh archaeologist, Dr Huw S. Groucutt, specializes in the intersection of climate change and human prehistory. He currently digs at two sites in Malta and is a lecturer in Mediterranean prehistory. Trained at Sheffield (BA Archaeology, MSc Palaeoanthropology) and Oxford (DPhil Archaeological Science), he investigates how environmental shifts influenced human evolution and cultural development.
His research uses stone tool analysis to understand human adaptations across the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia, and Northern Africa. With fieldwork experience spanning Malta, Arabia, and Senegal, Dr Groucutt explores how prehistoric communities responded to environmental challenges throughout the Quaternary period.
Dr Elena Soulioti is a specialist in Aegean Bronze Age archaeology. Her research interests center on the intersection of material culture, symbolism, and social practice in Bronze Age Aegean societies, with current work focusing on reinterpreting Minoan religious symbols through contextual and associative analytical strategies.
Her fieldwork experience encompasses major Minoan sites across Crete, including three seasons at the Palace of Zakros (2011-2013), where she studied and documented pottery from the original excavations. She has also conducted research at the Makrygialos Minoan Villa, working with Late Minoan IB materials under the INSTAP project, and participated in the Epidaurus Limera surface survey in Laconia. Her museum work includes studying unpublished Minoan materials at the Herakleion and Aghios Nikolaos museums.
David Pearlman is an archaeologist with over four decades of field experience across Cyprus and the Mediterranean. Holding a B.A. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati (1980) and an M.A. in Archaeology and Soil Science from the University of Minnesota (1984), David has contributed to numerous significant archaeological discoveries on the island.
His extensive fieldwork began in 1976 with the multi-national excavation team at the prehistoric settlement of Kastellatio in Sicily’s Belice Valley. The following year, he joined Brock University’s excavation of the Late Bronze Age temple site at Larnaca-Kition, Cyprus, launching what would become a distinguished career in Cypriot archaeology.
For nearly a decade (1978-87), David was the supervisor of the Vasilikos Valley Project, excavating Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement and cemetery sites at Kalavasos. He held leadership positions with the Canadian Palaipaphos Survey Project (1980-84), serving as crew leader and ethnographic consultant. His expertise was sought for excavations at major archaeological sites throughout Cyprus, including Kissonerga-Mosphilia, Peyia-Maa-Paliokastro, Pyla-Kokkinokremmos, and the Hellenistic/Roman tomb rescue excavations at Kato Paphos.
Experienced Cypriot tour guide, Eleni Ellinas was born in Famagusta in what is now Northern Cyprus and has curated private walks of the border zone of Cyprus for several years now. Here’s Eleni’s perspective on the authenticity she brings to Take Me To Europe Tours:
“My purpose is simple yet profound: to provide you with an insider’s perspective of Cyprus. Together, we’ll embark on a journey that allows you to perceive our island in a way few get to experience. Like many avid travellers, I yearn to uncover the hidden paths, to immerse myself in the essence of the places I visit. My passion extends to engaging with locals, exploring their cuisine, traditions, culture, and history – all integral components of a truly authentic experience.”
Eleni’s community involvement includes her work with Home for Cooperation (H4C), a community center situated in the UN buffer zone, which is the dividing line between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities.
If you’re lucky, Eleni will show you the apartment on Palm Beach in Varosha that her family fled during the Turkish occupation in 1974. With thousands of 5-star reviews, we feel extremely lucky to have such a warm, intelligent, and genuine human being as Eleni as our primary Cypriot tour leader.
Yes, that’s right. Our beloved Greek archaeologist, Dr. Elena Sulioti, is also a fully licensed and extremely experienced Greek tour guide. Elena is both our tour leader and our expert archaeologist on our Greece tours.
Elena has operated as a Licensed Tourist Guide throughout all of Greece, guiding in English, Spanish, German, and Greek for 25 years.
As Elena explains: “I graduated from the Greek State School of Guides, the official state education institution for professional guides in Greece. My preparation lasted 2.5 years and covered, apart from history and archaeology, all possible fields of knowledge involved in guiding (geography, botany, religion, mythology and folklore, the Greek economy and its foreign affairs, tourism law, guiding techniques, and the psychology of tourism.”
We reckon she can stop studying now…
