Exploring the Barossa Valley: A Journey into Wine and Travel

Forrest Kelly: 00:00:00

Welcome. Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast with Forest Kelly. It's time for a bonus episode.

Hey, I figured sometimes if you want to get to a winery, you have to travel. So let's talk travel with the smart travelista.

Linda King: 00:00:20

Hi, everyone, I'm Linda King. I'm also known as a smart travelista and you can find me at website the smart travelista.com.

Forrest Kelly: 00:00:28

Okay, Linda, welcome to the show. Let's start things off with a nice softball. Easy question. Let's hear about your story that led you to becoming the smart travelista.

Linda King: 00:00:37

Yeah, so my story started traveling as a young girl. Was really lucky to go on a road trip around Australia with my parents and my brother. That was an amazing trip.

And being a young youngster as I was, I said to my parents, can we do this all the time, all up forever? And they said, you can do whatever you like when you get older.

So then did was led me after school into the travel industry and started working there, booking people on trips. But I also took myself on trips, which was great, which was the aim.

And then I left the travel industry and went into banking, which was a little bit of a different slant, but learned a lot about money. And the smart travelistic came about because obviously I love and passionate about travel and also know a little bit about money.

So it's a combination of the two. Traveling really well but without the cost. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Forrest Kelly: 00:01:33

What do you think when you were young? What about it? When you went on that vacation with the family, what do you think got you?

Linda King: 00:01:39

I think being young and probably innocent and never experiencing something like that before, you know, as a, as a youngster, you in your home and you don't really go far from home.

I think going on that trip, I don't know, it just opened my eyes and it was like, gosh, I didn't know that this existed and, you know, seeing different things, I think what it did, it stimulated something in my brain that I wanted more of. It became quite addictive. It was like, oh, this is like something new. This is. We're learning things.

And yeah, I think it just sparked something in the brain that was like, I've got to get more of this.

Forrest Kelly: 00:02:13

Oh, I can certainly relate to that. Growing up in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Alaska, we were always traveling. Being an only child, it wasn't a big expense.

Plus when living in those states was, we were always camping, especially during the summertime.

But from I think it was nine until I was 14 every year when we lived in Idaho, my Dad would take a month off from work and we would travel to Southern California, to Disneyland and visit relatives and then come back home. So I love traveling. So you've got the base of loving to travel. So what other strengths do you have as being the smart travelista?

Linda King: 00:02:51

I think I've got a really strong depth of travel. Done a lot of it, been doing it all my life. I think I take everything that I do in my current career and sort of replicate that in the business.

So I share and coach people in my normal job. So what I tend to do is I've got all this expertise and share that with everybody in a way that's going to be understandable.

And then they can then take steps from that point to then have the cost savings themselves, money. Obviously it's a big one as well as the travel, but it's just about how you communicate, communicating what I know.

It's all well and good having this knowledge, but it's how you communicate and make that simple for everyone.

Forrest Kelly: 00:03:33

Since we are a podcast about wine, let's talk about going to a winery.

Linda King: 00:03:38

There's one really great one in Australia actually, in South Australia, the Barossa Valley. B A R O S S A Valley. And that is the place where all the wineries are.

Forrest Kelly: 00:03:50

Let's just pick a novice traveler and they want to go to the Barossa Valley Winery in South Australia. So you would sit down with and you would say, what would be the first thing? Would you go over budget or what would you do?

Linda King: 00:04:01

Yeah, budget's really important. We need to know how much money they've got to spare, how long have you got?

So you know, how many weeks or days have you got and then where are you coming from? So if you need to get to Adelaide, you probably need to fly into either Sydney or Melbourne and then to have a connecting flight out of those port.

You know, if you were going to also do Sydney and Melbourne, you maybe do Sydney, Melbourne and have a bit of sightseeing. Then from Sydney or Melbourne, fly to Adelaide.

And then from Adelaide you can either hire a car or you can actually go on day tours that will take you to the Barossa Valley. So it depends on what you want to do.

So if you don't feel like driving, you could maybe get a quick day tour that would take you to the Barossa Valley. You could do your wine tasting, get your purchases of wine and have a really lovely, relaxing day in the Barossa Valley.

It's a very pretty place and they're very welcoming and you'll see another part of this beautiful country.

Forrest Kelly: 00:04:57

Don't forget my favorite part.