In 1886, at the age of 22, Strauss travelled to Italy for the first time. This was certainly not a "holiday” but an educational journey in the tradition of the "grand tour”. The next extended journey to foreign climes served as recuperation from a life-threatening respiratory illness. In 1892/93 he, once again, travelled to Italy, Greece and Egypt returning deeply impressed and with the half-finished debut opera Guntram under his arm. Travel soon became a professional necessity. Concert tours led Strauss the conductor (conducting works including his own) across all of Europe as well as to North and South America. On such tours he always endeavoured to spend his free time visiting museums.

Richard Strauss was in Stuttgart when his son Franz was born in 1897. The so-called "summer holidays” with his family (for example in Westerlandt / Sylt) were relatively relaxing for Strauss. He particularly enjoyed driving by automobile, the latest trend at the time. He bought his first car in 1907 and drove to Italy in 1913. Later he made car trips (with his trusty chauffeur Martin) to the Dolomites and, once again for educational purposes, to central Italy.
He was a great admirer of Greece. In his last written note, dated July 1949, the composer described himself as a "Greek German". His 1926 pilgrimage to the home of the antiquities served to refresh the impressions he had gained in 1892. The late operas, Ägyptische Helena, Daphne and Danae were created out of this classical spirit.

Travel in the first three decades of the twentieth century was always an adventurous and rarely comfortable undertaking. Here are a few impressions from Richard Strauss the globetrotter. "To the concert in Brooklyn with an electric car (40 Marks) through a wild and miserably paved New York and across the wonderful Hudson bridge” (1904). "What a nightmare! I don’t like to complain, but eight hours from Berlin to Bielefeld in an unheated train – that was almost too much to bear, even for me. No dining car, no warm food or drinks" (1917, in the middle of World War I). Or, on a stopover during the sea voyage to South America in 1920, "We were stuck there for all of 21 hours – a horrible time. Four huge boats with coal on either side of the ship, the loading of which produced such dust and dirt that the foredeck had to be closed off with canvas, while all doors and windows remained shut tightly.”