Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 30 on 01/12/2006.

This article is 19 months old and some information provided may be time sensitive. Please check all details of events, tours, opening times and other information before travelling or making arrangements.

A perfect day (Edinburgh)

Edinburgh is one of the world’s great capital cities, and its sites well documented. Dominic Roskrow plans an indulgent and less obvious day out there

Some cities simply look after themselves. They are so familiar from photographs and travel programmes that you feel you know them before you ever set foot there. And a few – Prague, Paris, London, Milan, Madrid and most definitely Edinburgh – live up to the hype.

Cities such as these are to the cultural traveller what a toy shop is to a child. You need no second telling to go out and have fun, and if you find yourself bored in such places than frankly, you need to check you still have a pulse.

All of which makes the job of a travel writer with a few hundred words to play with quite difficult. It’s pretty much all been done bigger and better elsewhere, hasn’t it?

So here lies the challenge. And the solution?

How about planning one luxury day out that covers all the bases and includes something for the whole family?

So let’s get the children in to the spirit by considering them first and beginning the day with something for all the family.

Our Dynamic Earth is built on the site of the old Holyrood Brewery at the bottom of the Royal Mile not far from the Palace. It is a wonderfully executed educational science interactive experience that plots the development of our planet through history.

While much of it is educational it’s great fun, too, with lots for youngsters to press, experience and watch. Great staff, too.

A time machine, for instance, transports visitors back 15,000 million years, passing through key points of history to the Big Bang and the emergence of dinosa.....

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By Dominic Roskrow

Section : Regional Focus

Page number : 31