Trippin’ on Mother’s Day

On the second Sunday in May, I always do my daughterly duty presenting cards and candy to my own dear Mom. But since 2008 marks the holiday’s 100th anniversary, I figure it’s only fitting that this year I show my appreciation for some of motherhood’s all-time greats by honoring them in the locales they loved best.

The Royal
Dour Queen Victoria isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Still you’ve got to give the woman credit. After all, she took time out from running the British Empire to produce nine children. Motherhood didn’t come easy for her, mind you (Victoria survived an assassination attempt during her first pregnancy!). However, the Queen made things a whole lot easier for the rest of us because she was responsible for popularizing what was in the mid-19th century a radical, unrespectable idea––taking anesthetic to ease the pain of childbirth. Osborne Estate, the Queen’s private retreat on the Isle of Wight, seems like an appropriate spot to say “thanks.” The property’s Pavilion Cottage can be rented this month for £121 per night, based on a four-night stay. 

The Scientist
I’m clueless when it comes to anything vaguely scientific. So I’ve long been impressed by the indomitable Madame Curie. Having pioneered the study of radioactivity (and won a pair of Nobel Prizes in the process), she has been dubbed the Mother of Modern Physics. But she was also the mother of two daughters: one of whom went on to become a Nobel Laureate herself. The most educational way to celebrate Marie and her “nuclear family” is by making a pilgrimage to Paris’  Left Bank to see the laboratory where she labored endlessly from 1914 until her death in 1934. Musée Curie’s restored rooms contain her original furnishings and instruments, plus the three Nobel prizes won by the Curie clan.

The Writer
Today Anne Morrow Lindbergh is best remembered as the long-suffering wife of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh and the grief-stricken mother of the kidnapped Lindbergh Baby—which is a shame because she accomplished a great deal in her own right. Equally devoted to her family and her writing, Anne successfully raised the couple’s five surviving children, yet still managed to slip away to Florida’s Captiva Island and pen Gift from the Sea: a little guide to life that stands up as well now as when it was published in 1955. Nothing beats reading her book at ’Tween Waters Inn (this May, a vintage cottage named for Anne costs $260–$325 a night), then scouring the Captiva coastline for the kinds of seashells that inspired it.