Edinburgh Family Holidays and Breaks

Edinburgh History and Culture with Kids

• Don’t miss Edinburgh Castle, which dominates the city skyline and is home to both the Scottish Crown Jewels (the Honours), famous One O'Clock Gun and National War Museum, as well as offering glorious views.

• Any evening in August, watch  the Military Tattoo, a mix of pageantry and parade against the floodlit backdrop of the Castle, with its fair share of bagpipes and Americans and Australians tracing their families back to the old country. For sheer soldier per square foot, it can’t be beat.  

• Stroll down the Royal Mile to the Palace of Holyroodhouse at the other end from the Castle – it’s King Charle’s official residence in Scotland but is more famous for having been home to Mary Queen of Scots during her turbulent reign (it was the setting for the murder of her secretary Rizzio by her jealous husband). 

• Discover Edinburgh’s fascinating museums, including the National Museum of Scotland, tracing the history of the local land, people and culture; the Museum of Childhood, described as ‘the noisiest museum in the world’; and opposite it the Brass Rubbing Centre, where you can make create everything from medieval knights to Celtic designs.

• Experience the Scottish Storytelling Centre, a  unique modern building on the Royal Mile, celebrating the art of storytelling through the child-friendly exhibition Scotland’s Stories.

• Bring teens to the Edinburgh International Festival, with classical music, theatre, opera and dance artists from every corner of the globe. Running simultaneously (more or less – as part of ‘the Festival’) are the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where ‘anything goes’, from musical theatre and cutting-edge comedy to children’s shows including storytelling and magic, plus hundreds of jugglers, stilt-walkers and buskers, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival, with lots of events for children.

• At The Real Mary King’s Close Experience, explore warren of ancient ‘closes’  hidden beneath the Royal Mile for centuries, including the home of a gravedigger’s family where you can learn about the plague. Special Supernatural History tours up the creepy ante for those that way inclined.

• Sign up for spooky Edinburgh tours or head to the Edinburgh Dungeons for a hilariously schlocky insight into local history.

Edinburgh Green Spaces 

• Explore the former royal hunting estate of Holyrood Park, now a free-access swathe of hills, lochs, glens, ridges, cliffs and natural springs.

• Make the popular and fairly easy walk up Arthur’s Seat rising at the centre of Holyrood Park, rewarding you with splendid city and countryside views.

Other Edinburgh Attractions with Kids

• Learn about the planet in an interactive way at the nature-based attraction Dynamic Earth.

• Visit the Camera Obscura & World of Illusions on Castlehill, where, within a Victorian rooftop chamber, through the use of a mirror, lenses and daylight, you can see a live moving panorama of Edinburgh projected onto a viewing table. Kids love pretending to pick people up on their hands and squash them, or make the traffic climb over paper bridges. In the same venue try out the Magic Gallery where you can, for instance, make your hands glow as if they’re being X-rayed; and the Light Fantastic exhibition of holograms.

• Tour the Royal Yacht Britannia 3km outside the centre in the port of Leith, seeing the Queen’s old bedroom and an on-board garage still housing one of her Rolls Royces. 

What to Do Near Edinburgh

• Venture 40km east of the city to the seaside town of North Berwick on the Firth of Forth in East Lothian. Sights close to it include the ruined medieval fortress Tantallon Castle on its promontory.

• View the goings on at Bass Rock, an island that appears white due to much of its surface being covered by gannets and their guano (it’s the world’s biggest single-island gannet colony). It can’t be visited. but the Scottish Seabird Centre screens live-action footage from the island, some by cameras you can operate by remote control, or there boat-trips around it.