“Besides, on general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.” -- Sherlock Holmes in DISA

Holmes traveled quite a bit for his cases, and he sometimes traveled to the countryside for holiday. He traveled to Paris, France in 1889 for "The Adventure of the Second Stain" to work alongside Inspector Dubique and Dantzig (a specialist) (NAVA). Later, in the winter of 1890 and spring of 1891, Holmes was in Narbonne and Nimes on "a matter of supreme importance" for the French government (FINA).

As he was fleeing from Moriarty with Watson in FINA he traveled the continent.

The trip included many destinations. Among them: Brussels, Belgium Strasburg, France Luxembourg Basle, Switzerland Geneva, Switzerland Leuk, Switzerland Interlaken, Switzerland Meiringen, Switzerland

Map of Holmes & Watson's flight from London to the Reichenbach Falls

"For a charming week we wandered up the Valley of the Rhone, and then, branching off at Leuk, we made our way over the Gemmi Pass, still deep in snow, and so, by way of Interlaken, to Meiringen. It was a lovely trip, the dainty green of the spring below, the virgin white of the winter above . . . .Once, I remember, as we passed over the Gemmi, and walked along the border of the melancholy Daubensee, a large rock which had been dislodged from the ridge upon our right clattered down and roared into the lake behind us . . . . It was upon the 3rd of May that we reached the little village of Meiringen, where we put up at the Englischer Hof, then kept by Peter Steiler the elder" (FINA).

On their way to Rosenlaui, they detoured to see the fateful Reichenbach Falls, which drop 250 meters (656 feet). Holmes continued on in his travels. He gives an account of it in EMPT:

Reichenbach Falls

I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa and spending some days with the head Llama. You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend. I then passed through Persia, looked in at Mecca, and paid a short but interesting visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum, the results of which I have communicated to the Foreign Office. Returning to France I spent some months in a research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpelier, in the South of France.

Though Holmes spent these few exciting years in exotic places, his home was in London; and he tended to stay in and around that area - venturing out only if alluring cases demanded his attention.