Edinburgh is the perfect city for a long weekend getaway with kids. It’s compact and walkable. People are friendly. And there are plenty of things to do, see and eat around the pedestrian Royal Mile in the city center.
There are lively neighborhoods, a lovely hike you can do right in town, and good, inexpensive restaurants seemingly all over.
We had a busy and memorable five-day stay in Scotland’s main city. Here are the best things we discovered to do with kids in Edinburgh, plus kid-friendly restaurants and a review of the hotel where we stayed.
2 Great Edinburgh Hotels For Families
Kimpton Charlotte Square
On our first visit, we lucked out by finding a good off-season deal on the Kimpton Charlotte Square. The hotel, on the edge of New Town, is a 10-to-15-minute walk to Edinburgh Castle and the top of the Royal Mile. And it’s a 20-minute walk to Stockbridge, a residential and somewhat trendy neighborhood.
We had pharmacies, book and clothing stores along Princes Street, and plenty of good, inexpensive restaurants nearby, particularly along Rose Street. and it’s a block from the Princes Street Gardens park, which has a large, nice playground.
This landmark hotel is much bigger than it seems from the outside. It has taken over a string of townhouses and also has buildings added on behind that you can’t see from the street.
Our Family Room wasn’t especially roomy. But I really appreciated that the foldout couch was in an alcove. We could leave it open all the time without it being in our way, which is very unusual.
Best of all, it had a pool, something I otherwise only saw in hotels well away from the city center. After walking around in the cold, gray, damp October weather, it was lovely to return to the hotel to swim in the pool and then warm up in the sauna and steam room. We swam every day.
My only caution is that for a weekend stay you’ll want to request a room not facing Rose Street; folks heading home from the pubs can be boisterous.
Marriott Residence Inn
On a recent visit we stayed on the other side of the Old Town at the Residence Inn by Marriott, which is more or less on the campus of the University of Edinburgh and perfectly quiet at night.
This was very much a family hotel because of the large rooms with kitchenettes and the very good free breakfast, which was packed every morning of the school-break week that coincided with our stay.
There’s no concierge, but the front desk staff went out of their way to be helpful whenever we had a question, even finding a restaurant still open when we arrived after 9:00 on our first night.
It’s steps from the National Museum and a five-minute walk to the Royal Mile. Given its proximity to the university, there were several good pubs and restaurants close by, including a lot of inexpensive Asian food, which my teen loves.
Edinburgh With Kids Cheat Sheet
• Book the Kimpton Charlotte Square or
• The Marriott Residence Inn
• or find well-priced air-and-hotel packages on Expedia.
• Or book this cute 2-bedroom vacation rental in Old Town,
• We found the Hop-on Hop-Off bus really handy for getting to know the city.
• If you have an extra day, book a day trip to the Highlands and famous Loch Ness.
• Don’t miss Sunday Roast at The Ox pub in New Town.
The 18 Best Things To Do & See With Kids in Edinburgh
Explore The Royal Mile With Kids
Edinburgh’s Royal Mile is exactly that: A mile-long pedestrian zone that slopes down from ancient Edinburgh Castle to the still-in-use Palace at Holyroodhouse.
It takes 15 to 30 minutes to walk end-to-end. But consider spending a full day making your way along it, exploring its many small museums, shops and kid-friendly pubs.
Royal Edinburgh
Hulking, medieval, Edinburgh Castle and stately Holyroodhouse are very different, and both are worth seeing.
The Castle is the place to go to learn about historic Edinburgh with its battles, sieges and (frequent) assassinations of young monarchs. We didn’t take a tour or even pay for the audio self-tours, and I wish we had.
The history that has happened here is far more interesting than just looking at canons and battlements. 9YO Tiny Traveler was surprisingly intrigued by an exhibit on what has happened to Scotland’s crown jewels through history. The jewels themselves are on display, too, and are quite impressive.
Note: In October we waited in line for about ten minutes, but we were told that during peak weeks the castle gets packed. Buying tickets ahead or booking a skip-the-line tour might be a good idea during school breaks and in the summer.
We learned our lesson and accepted the complementary audio tours of the Palace of Holyroodhouse. It has different narrations for kids and adults.
I didn’t get to hear any of the kids’ tour, but Tiny Traveler was very engaged. She wouldn’t leave each room until the recording was done, and even murmured, “Hmm, interesting,” a few times.
You’ll see Mary, Queen of Scots’ apartments, the throne room, the formal dining and more. Your enjoyment of it all will depend on how interested you are in the historic and current British and Scottish royals.
Tickets: You can save money on Edinburgh Castle by buying a family ticket and doing it online before you go. You’ll save by buying Holyroodhouse tickets ahead, too. There’s no family ticket, but they do include the audio guides.
Note: The royal family lives at Holyroodhouse when in Edinburgh and the King holds an annual tea party in the garden for a few thousand people. Parts of the palace are not open to the public. And there are formal security measures. Be prepared to have your bags searched and don’t carry anything larger than a small backpack.
The Best Kids’ Museums in Edinburgh
Edinburgh has several large, well-known museums that don’t scream “kid-friendly.” But there are also a handful of small museums along the Royal Mile that are very quirky, kid-friendly and fun. And if one isn’t a hit with your kids, you can see what you want to and leave before they get too bored.
• Starting from the top, just below the Castle, don’t miss the Camera Obscura and World of Illusions museum, which was an all-time favorite with Tiny Travler.
The actual camera, built by a woman in the 1860s, sits on the roof and has a series of mirrors and lenses. By shifting them around, the camera operator can zoom in on several parts of the city and project them onto a white surface. It’s cool and intrigues both kids and adults.
The surprising part is the several floors leading up to the camera that are filled with hands-on exhibits about light, shadows, mirrors, motion, electricity and lenses, and the many ways to employ them to create illusions.
Unlike our local science museum where we’re always competing with ten other kids to get to the hands-on stuff, this wasn’t very crowded. Tiny Traveler could try everything she wanted to several times over. Don’t miss the spinning vortex tunnel on the way out.
For a cheap thrill, buy a “mystery bag” for a few pounds in the gift shop and save it for for some moment when your kids are bored. Ours had candy and a few decent novelty toys.
• A few paces don’t the street you’ll find Gladstone’s Land Museum, a refurbished tenement that shows how it would have been furnished and decorated during three periods of its history.
This is a supremely kid-friendly museum if you take one of the guided tours they offer in the afternoon —included in the ticket price. The guides will tell you all kinds of colorful details about the residents and the building. They’ll show you a desk that has many secrets. And they let you sit on some of the furniture and handle many of the artifacts in the rooms.
The first floor reflects an upper-middle-class family that owned the building in the 1600s. The second represents a middle-class couple that ran a tailor’s shop from their apartment in the 1700s. And the top looks the way it might have when a widow and her two working-class boarders were residents in the 1800s.
Tip: Gladstone’s Land has an ice cream shop, but it closes at 4:00 when the museum does. If you take the 3:00 tour, get there in time to enjoy some supremely good locally-made ice cream. We tried the raspberry ripple, whiskey and Scottish tablet (like a toffee-crunch). You can stop in for ice cream without visiting the shop.
• One block further down, you can visit the Real Mary King’s Close, a well-done tour of the excavated ruins of 17th century tenements.
Our tour guide had a macabre, Monty-Pythonesque sense of humor, which is kind of necessary. The tour provides a frank and vivid depiction of how dark and miserable the city was until well into the 1800s.
There is a specialty tour focused on illness and medicine when the tenement had people living in it. Teens and some tweens will find it interesting and possibly entertaining.
But 9YO Tiny Traveler found the basic tour plenty spooky and covered her ears to miss the guide’s discussion of the plague years. I suggest sticking to the basic tour for kids aged 5 to 11 or 12. Kids under 5 are not allowed.
• We also stopped in at the Storytelling Centre, which has storytelling events for families during school breaks and a small but very nice bookshop that’s worth browsing in if your kids are readers. The first time we visited our kid bought two books by Scottish YA writers that we wouldn’t have found in the US and she hunted down out all their other books after we were home.
Royal Mile Shopping
You can’t leave Scotland without tartanwear, Scotch whiskey or shortbread in your suitcase. Edinburgh’s main drag has numerous stores that sell each of these, which is not surprising.
The numerous Taste of Scotland shops that sell shortbread and fudge often have free samples and Tiny Traveler was happy to try them all. You can buy shortbread in a variety of boxes and tins, and we did. Just count on a few cookies breaking before you get them home.
I picked up a warm wool scarf in the Gunn tartan. But if your family lacks Scottish roots, you can go royal and buy the Stewart tartan, with its royal associations, or just pick out a pattern you like.
We also went into a whiskey shop to look for a bottle of a Scotch we’d had the night before and liked. Alas, they don’t give free samples. But the store-owner knew his stock and could point us to the less peaty brands that we preferred. He also told us which brands aren’t exported so we could bring back something unique,
Tiny Traveler has never met a Christmas shop she didn’t like. There are two (yes, two) such shops on the mile that are chock-full of tartan tree decorations. Even if you don’t buy anything, window-shopping is free and highly entertaining.
Things To Do With Kids Beyond The Royal Mile
The One Big Museum To See
The National Museum of Scotland, a few blocks from The Royal Mile, is free. The building itself is gorgeous, with a bright, open Victorian atrium and floors that look like sample cases when you view them from a certain angle.
It’s like the Smithsonian condensed into one building with entire sections devoted to Scottish, world and natural history, science and technology, and art and design.
The museum has a lot family activities, starting with a large hands-on science wing for kids.
You can pick up audio guides to specific galleries. I recommend the one that leads you to all the museum’s highlights, as a good introduction to the museum. You can grab one of several paper “trails” that will lead kids through specific exhibits, too.
We filled an afternoon here and Tiny Traveler could easily have spent a full day if we had it to spare.
Tip: We decided to grab lunch at the café here on a return visit because we were short on time. It was very good. Rich had an authentic smoked fish soup and I had equally Scottish potato leak soup. Teen Traveler had ham croquettes. They had good sparkling lemonade and a few local beers and ciders on the menu, too.
The Surprising Surgeon’s Hall Museums
I expected the Surgeon’s Hall Museums to be staid, dull and possibly full of gross things. I was wrong!
There were indeed some bits and bobs that the squeamish will want to ignore. But it was highly engaging and we spend twice as long as we thought we would. I saw elementary and high school groups while we were there and they were all having a ball.
The highlight for me was sitting in small lecture theater and listening to a professor’s 18th century lecture about a dissection the school’s faculty had “recently” completed. The dissection happened virtually (but not in a way that was gross) on a “body” in the center of the theater.
Upstairs, there was an exhibit about robotic surgery, where you could try your hand at tasks surgeons do every day. This was the part the kids and teens flocked to.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle attended lectures here. And you can learn about the remarkably observant doctor who was his inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.
Hiking up to Arthur’s Seat with kids
Arthur’s Seat is an impressive volcanic hill that rises up from the city from behind Holyroodhouse. It’s a major attraction, great to do with kids and, of course, hiking is free.
The hike begins along the ridge that sits in front of Arthur’s Seat. We chose to follow the path counter-clockwise, which provided us with a slightly steep ascent but excellent views of the city, the palace and the castle.
If you walk clockwise around the ridge you’ll have an easier walk that’s good with kids younger than 7 or if you have a baby in a carrier.
Either way, you’ll make your way to a plateau where you can continue on the circular ridge and head back down (easy), climb to the top of the plateau (moderate) or tackle the steeper trails to the top (challenging).
We chose the middle option, which provided great photo opportunities and enough activity to make us very hungry for lunch.
Note: Nearly 9YO enjoyed the ample opportunities to rock climb and scramble around. But all the paths have cliffs that are not always obvious. We had to remind her a few times to be mindful of the edge. Keep very young children and dogs close at hand.
Take A Stroll Through Stockbridge
We wanted to see Edinburgh’s less touristy side, so we walked into the residential part of New Town and on to residential Stockbridge, which is dotted with small private parks and features Georgian homes with discreet basement courtyards.
We strolled Stockbridge’s appealing high street (Raeburn Place), admired the foods and goods at the lively outdoor Sunday market, and bought raspberry-flavored handmade marshmallows, to Tiny Traveler’s delight.
After the market, we followed the footpaths that run alongside the picturesque Waters of Leith to the charming 19th century Dean Village, which doesn’t have a lot going on, but it’s pretty to walk around. And you can debate whether it was the inspiration for Harry Potter’s Godric’s Hollow.
It was hard to believe the cramped and crowded Old Town was barely a mile from this bucolic corner of the city. If you need a break from sightseeing, this is the place to go.
Kid-Friendly Restaurants On & Off The Royal Mile
Along the Mile
Despite being tourist central, there is quite a bit of good food to be found along The Royal Mile.
• We had an excellent full Scottish breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, a fried portobello, a piece of haggis, toast and pots of tea one morning at Edinburgh Larder on a side street just off the lower half of the mile.
Everything was house-made or acquired locally; nothing came out of a can. It was one of the best fry-ups we’ve ever had. Go early, as a queue usually forms later in the morning.
• On a local recommendation, we had a very nice lunch at the Albanach Pub about midway down the mile.
My ham and cheese and Rich’s smoked salmon had local ingredients and were on very good local bread. Tiny Traveler’s kid’s portion of macaroni and cheese was made from scratch with Scottish cheddar. It came with a salad that she ignored (I liked it) and garlic toast that she loved.
On a return visit, she went with the main-menu mac & cheese. RIch and I shared crisp fish & chips and a vibrant mint pea soup.
• Stopping at the Holyroodhouse Café for an afternoon snack allows you to tell people you had tea at the palace. We skipped the tea but had crown-shaped shortbread cookies and lemonade after we toured the palace.
Elsewhere in Old Town
• We had great Indian food at Tuk Tuk Indian Street Food, a colorful, casual restaurant near the university. Samosas were tasty but bite-size. If you plan to share them, get two orders. But the butter chicken was the most surprising. It had a real kick and the thick almond sauce was great to scoop up with warm naan.
• Ciao Roma is a kid-friendly Italian spot across the Tuk Tuk. If you walk in on Southbridge Street it looks like an Italian grotto. But if you enter from Drummond Street, around the coner, you find yourself in a pirate-themed room that pays homage to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. We chose to dine with the pirates because it was a quieter room.
Despite the kitsch factor, they turn out great fresh pasta dishes and pizzas. The dessert menu is several pages long and was enticing enough that we each ordered our own, something we never do. I had a homemade ice cream cake, Rich chose a tropical-flavored knickerbocker glory and Teen Traveler had tiramisu.
• If your teen is an adventurous eater, seek out Tapas3, a lovely tapas restaurant tucked away on a residential street. We had some of our favorite tapas, like croquettes and shrimp in garlic sauce, along with some things that were new to us, like harissa-spiced chicken skewers. And we finished by dipping churros in warm chocolate.
• Elephant House, two blocks from The Royal Mile back toward the top, is a coffee shop with a worn-in college-campus feel. It’s a good stop for breakfast or an afternoon break.
We stopped in one morning and Rich and I shared a good-sized leek and cheese quiche and a scone. Tiny Traveler had a shortbread cookie shaped like an elephant (not the best breakfast, but when in Rome…). They have full breakfast dishes, too.
It’s an essential stop for Harry Potter fans, as JK Rowling wrote part of the first book here. It’s easy to believe that the view of the castle out the back window inspired her vision of Hogwarts. It’s also a good place to go with very little kids because they will love the hundreds of elephants around the shop.
Dining In New Town
• We loved our Sunday roast at The Ox so much (see below) that we returned for dinner the following night. And went back again on our recent visit.
The first time around Rich and I shared a small bowl of local mussels, rich oxtail onion soup and crunchy, breadcrumb-covered haggis balls. If you’re curious about Scotland’s famous sausage, this is a good way to try it. Tiny Traveler eschewed all of those things and enjoyed fresh fried haddock & chips.
We went back recently. We revisited the haggis balls. And Teen Traveler and I shared twice-cooked ox cheek that was tender and covered in the richest gravy I’ve ever had. We dipped everything on the plate in it.
• Next to the Castle wall on Saturdays year-round there is an Edinburgh Outdoor Market that’s worth visiting with an appetite. Scotch Eggs, an assortment of meat pies, fresh cheeses and baked goods all looked enticing. And don’t miss the stall owned by Valvona & Crolla, a popular Italian food store in the New Town.
Book A Sunday Roast
Residents of the U.K. and Ireland go to their neighborhood pub on Sunday afternoon to eat plates of roast beef or leg of lamb with all the trimmings.
This is a local tradition our whole family loves, so on Saturday night we researched the Best Sunday Roasts in Edinburgh and noted that several were near each other in the New Town.
We headed first to the Cumberland Bar, which was at the top of at least one list, but reservations are essential, and we didn’t have one.
The bartender at The Ox, which also tops many lists, offered us the sole booth in the bar area. Quite a few people who came in after us without reservations were turned away, so we felt pretty lucky to have snagged a table at all.
We ordered drinks and settled in to wait for our feast.
When our plates arrived, we each had a thick slice of beef sitting on a bed of perfectly cooked Kale, carrots, parsnips and crisp roasted potatoes (nips and tatties).
It was crowned with a Yorkshire pudding filled with meaty, rich gravy that tasted as though it had been cooking for three days. (Tiny Traveler received a smaller kids’ portion of the same food.)
We ate it all and had to resist licking our plates. We somehow found room for dessert and ordered a treacle tart, largely because Harry Potter loves it and Tiny Traveler wanted to know what it was. It was much better than I expected: not too sweet, with a nice shortbread-cookie crust and served with clotted cream.
Note: The price for the Sunday Roast is just under £20, and a little less for the kid’s plate. The excellent price-to-quality ratio contributes to The Ox’s popularity.
Tips for Getting Around the City
We don’t usually do city bus tours, but we were glad we opted for the Hop-On Hop-Off bus here. It was warm inside the bus. And we got a good overview of what there was to see and where things were. Also, the ticket was good for 24 hours, so we used the bus to get around town a bit, too.
Edinburgh has a good network of public buses. But aside from the tourist bus and one or two taxis, we found it easy enough to walk everywhere. The one public transit ride you might want to take advantage of is the tram that connects New Town with the airport.
What To Pack for Edinburgh in the Fall
When we visited in early October, the dampness made it feel colder than the temperature said it was. We packed autumn-weight jackets, but on our first day, we went to Marks & Spencer to buy the wool hats, scarves and gloves we should have packed.
The cobblestone streets are hard on your feet and there’s a good chance you’ll see some rain. Low-heel boots that will keep your feet warn and dry that you can do a lot of walking around in are essential. Tiny Traveler spent the weekend in her insulated Bogs.
Books to Bring With You
• Rick Steve’s compact Snapshot Edinburgh Guide was useful and is available as an e-Book and paperback.
• My daughter loved reading M. Sasek’s famous This is Edinburgh, full of facts and stylish illustrations.
• Alexander McCall Smith‘s 44 Scotland Street Series are set in New Town and Stockbridge and have such a strong enough sense of place that I expected to run into the characters.
• In addition to being a fun vacation read, Jenny Colgan’s The Christmas Bookshop captures the city at its best.
•Ian Rankin’s Rebus mystery series and Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting series capture Edinburgh’s grittier days and darker corners. But they’re among the most popular and critically acclaimed books set in the city.
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