One of my favorite travel-related novels is Graham Greene's 1939 murder mystery Brighton Rock, because Greene summarizes better than any other writer why people go through the trouble of traveling. In its first pages, he describes the difficulties lower-class Londoners went through for a day at the beach, standing in packed carriages from Victoria and returning home in the bleary hours of morning.
In one of the most beautiful sentences I've read, he explains why they do it:
"With immense labour and immense patience they extricated from the long day the grain of pleasure: this sun, this music, the rattle of the miniature cars, the ghost train diving between the grinning skeletons under the Aquarium promenade, the sticks of Brighton rock, the paper sailors' caps." ]]>