The National Museum of Scotland is fantastic. Interesting, interactive, and an absolutely wonderful place to spend a few hours with kids. We ended up there twice. The first was after Edinburgh Castle and one other. Both times we ate at the museum.
The first time we got there after the Brasserie kitchen was closed and went up to the cafe on the Grand Gallery. While the gallery is, indeed, grand as far as atmospheres went the museum seemed to do their best to make the whole experience feel institutional using a quasi cafeteria format.
The food was decent. I had a superfood salad that was quite tasty despite the wedge of unripe avocado and SM was quite happy with is chicken sandwich. I spent most of my time during our first visit in the kids’ section of the animal zone. LB made, easily, a dozen digital fish, dug up dinosaurs, played “guess the animal” in a variety of ways, guess the smell in one way, and generally ran around with the other children.
The next visit the Brasserie on the ground floor was still open. I had the Cullen skink which would have merely slightly above average if I had not chosen the cheddar cheese scone to accompany it. With the scone it was absolutely delicious. In the end I dumped the scone into what was .left of the soup and spooned up the soggy goodness speckled with the scant bits of fish they put in the stew. SM found his hamburger to be satisfactory.
This time I got to see quite a bit more of the museum. The exhibits cover Scottish history, the ancients, fashion, technology, world cultures, and, as already mentioned, animals from prehistoric to modern. But the reason I would go back again in a heartbeat, besides being free, the museum is an absolutely brilliant place for kids with literally hundreds of games and interactive adventures spread throughout the museum.
The National Museum is so well tailored to children that it even beats out the Museum of Childhood, a museum literally filled with toys, as my favorite place is Edinburgh for children. Though this is in part because the National Museum is one I would go back to even without kids.
That said the Museum of Childhood turned out to be way bigger and better than I thought it would be. We rather lucked out because the museum is only recently reopened after a ground floor renovation that resulted in an interactive space, with dedicated zones focusing on various aspects of a child’s life. The renovations stopped at the ground floor and the comparison leaves the upper rooms looking a little more tired than they might have otherwise.
The museum advertises itself as the first museum in the world dedicated to the history of childhood. It’s not just about childhood leisure but the process of growing up and what that meant for different generations in life at home, in school and at play. I found the myriad conflicting information on the health, care, and feeding of infants to be particularly enthralling in a disturbing sort of way.
It is filled with toys and games that span across decades focusing more on the previous two centuries rather than this one. The vast majority of toys and games are behind glass but each exhibit space has at least one play zone. The puppet’s stage was a favorite of LB’s and all of the kids seemed to linger by the dollhouse and play tea set.
At one point SM took charge of LB and urged me to go to the National Gallery. I was reluctant but am incredibly glad I caved despite the Gallery being under renovation and only showing limited displays. As it says on the site, “The Scottish National Gallery displays some of the greatest art in the world, including masterpieces by Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Constable, Turner, Monet, Van Gogh and Gauguin, amongst many others.”
The current exhibition covers the medieval period through early modern. Despite the constraints placed by the renovations it is well curated and easy to make your way through. Unless you are trying to maneuver via wheelchair. Then you’ll have to wait until construction is finished to see it comfortably. Obviously, there is a focus on Scottish artists with all of the most well known represented. It gave me an idea for a series of self portraits through the eyes of others.
We also went to Dynamic Earth which I had read was wonderful for kids. And it is, just not for really young kids. It is expensive but you can see where the money goes. It is extremely interactive. More like an educational theme park.
The premise is that you are sent back through time to observe the world through the ages. They use various technologies to affect all of the senses. The ice caps are cold, the ground shakes with earthquakes, you interact with holograms, kids can engage in missions that make the whole thing even more hands on, there are films, and the whole thing is exhaustively signed.
Kids under 4 are free but it is almost 10£ for 4 to 15 year olds. Frankly, I wouldn’t pay to take in a kid under 7 unless they were already showing a strong interest in the subject matter. Most of it will go over the head of a kid who isn’t at least at reading level. The result was us trading off going through the exhibits alone while the other waited with LB in the soft playroom on the other side of the gift shop.