Planning A Spring Visit
Edinburgh in spring is a riot of colour and charm- from the fresh green of Princes Street Gardens to the lines of daffodils that spring up around the city, to the collective happiness of the locals as Edinburgh unfurls in the gentle sunlight.
Edinburgh has 12 major festivals across the year, and in spring the themes of re-growth and development are the strongest with the Science and Imaginate festivals, both of which have a strong focus on robust children’s programmes of exploration and innovation.
Spring in Edinburgh is leisurely in pace, and as such is a perfect time for families to get involved in the spirit of the festivals.
The year kicks off with the Edinburgh International Science Festival, which runs from the 23rd March - 7 April 2013. The festival programme has not yet been announced (check back on the 31st January 2013 for full details!), but some returning favourites include the five floors of festival fun in the City Arts Centre which in the past has contained everything from the popular Dig up a Dinosaur to explorations of creepy crawlies and beginners experiments.
It is the perfect place to experience top notch family festival fun, in addition to a variety of exhibitions and lectures. Previous adult events have included a scientific exploration on the nature of sin, a one on one encounter with Honda’s ASIMO and a single’s science evening.
If you are planning to visit the city in May, The Imaginate Festival fills the city with some of the world’s best theatre for children and young people. Running across 6 venues city wide, including major venues such as the Traverse theatre and Dancebase, it welcomes performers and artists from all over the world during the week-long festival, which runs from 6th- 13th May 2013. The programme of events for this festival will soon be announced so check back on the website for details.
In addition to festival events, there are a range of family friendly activities around the city that can complement a spring festival experience. Many museums and historical spaces are traditionally free in Scotland, and the National Museum of Scotland is a good place to start. Other family friendly spaces include Edinburgh Castle, the Botanic Gardens and Camera Obscura. For more information on family friendly spaces, view more information here.
Planning the details:
There are some essential links that can help with planning a spring visit to Edinburgh for you and your family:
www.visitscotland.com, the country’s national tourism authority, is an excellent source of information about Edinburgh and Scotland in general.
To view tickets and performance details, or to search what is on day by day, please visit out What to See and Do section. Please note that events only appear in the system as they are announced, and as such information is only available once programmes have gone live.
Edinburgh has a wealth of accommodation on offer, and some key links to help you out are the following:
Edinburgh has a great range of hotels, ranging from 1 to 5 star options, as well as hostels, bed and breakfast and guest house accommodation. Good websites to look at are: Gumtree, Visitscotland.com, Laterooms,and Hotelscombined to find your best rates.
Scotland is also very compact with good transport routes, and Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city, and the picturesque cities of Perth and Stirling are only 45 minutes by train, so accommodation in these hubs is also a possibility if price is key.
Best of luck with your spring planning!
