Edinburgh and Glasgow have so many top quality, family friendly museums, many of which are free! We’ve had a wonderful time over the last month exploring both cities and have been really impressed by all the museums available.
Below is a little recap of our visits to the museums in Edinburgh:
While it is a historic site, a visit to Edinburgh Castle does include entry into the National War Museum that is housed inside the castle walls. The other highlight of our visit was seeing the Honours of Scotland - the priceless crown, sceptre and sword. We also enjoyed doing the kids activity sheet, where we had to find the answer to questions around the castle. It’s a really fun way to keep the kids engaged.
Camera Obscura and the World of Illusions
Camera Obscura is located next to Edinburgh Castle at the top of the Royal Mile and was one of our most favourite experience; we all had such a fun time.
The Camera Obscura is on the top floor and uses daylight and reflections to project a live image internally onto a table within a dark chamber. The guide took us on a live tour, showing off some of the city’s best landmarks via the reflected image. The terrace on the top level also offers amazing views across to Princes Street and down the Royal Mile.
The five floors below are filled with interactive illusions. Our favourite was the mirror maze and the spinning vortex tunnel. We all had so much fun, there is so many things to experiment with and optical illusions to marvel at.
Located the end of the Royal Mile, next to the Scottish Parliament House, Our Dynamic Earth is a science centre specialising in geology and the physical evolution of planet Earth,.I took the girls here on the day that Braino went to see the Scotland vs Australia Rugby game. There is a planetarium dome with fascinating presentations and the other highlights for us were the earthquake simulation room and the real iceberg that you can touch and feel melting.
The Museum of Childhood (FREE)
This is a fun little museum that takes a look at childhood in Scotland throughout the last two centuries. It has a collection of (somewhat creep) dolls and toys from previous decades (it was a little strange to see toys that I played with as a kids in a museum) but there was enough interactive displays to keep the girls interested and engaged. For a free museums its very good for kids, we spent about an hour having a look around - it’s located on the Royal Mile.
The National Museum of Scotland (FREE)
This was another fanatic free museum that had some interesting displays for kids. We spent around an hour and a half inside and didn’t see everything, we could have spent much longer. The Natural World gallery with skeletons and stuffed animals is always a hit with the girls. And the World Cultures galleries have some fantasying displays about diverse people and cultures from around the world. I was sufficiently creeped out by Dolly the Sheep - the first ever cloned mammal.
Also located on the Royal Mile, the Museum of Edinburgh is another free museum. We didn’t make it into this one, but it does looks family friendly.
More from Glasgow in the next blog post!