Five last-minute things for families to do in Edinburgh

Six storeys of attractions that will bend the mind of everyone in your family: holograms, optical illusions, a vortex tunnel, the big-small room where you’ll shrink and your kids will become enormous, just like the famous scene in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. The actual Camera Obscura is in a Victorian rooftop chamber at the top of the Outlook Tower, and projects moving images of the incredible view of the city onto the walls.
The Royal Mile, EH1 2ND. www.camera-obscura.co.uk

For your littlest of people, seek out the following: the Magic Carpet, which lands in a different gallery every week, and is the location for stories, songs and playtime; Feely Fridays, where you get to manhandle dinosaur poo and the Imagine gallery, for fancy dress and creative pattern-making. For the slightly bigger: the Energy Wheel, in which you run like a hamster to light up the room; the Explore gallery, to sit in a Formula 1 car; and Animal World, where you can race a cheetah.
Chambers Street, EH1 1JF. www.nms.ac.uk

Learn what an earthquake feels like, experience a tropical rainstorm, visit the bottom of the ocean, take a trip back to the ice age, and perhaps most impressively: take a virtual tour around the relatively new Earthscape Scotland gallery to journey deep into the Earth’s core and rub some fossils. If your kids are dreamers, not historians, head for the Futuredome so they can start thinking about what the next 200 years on Planet Earth look like.
Holyrood Road, EH8 8AS. www.dynamicearth.co.uk

Mostly, it’s all about the play areas, especially the wooden castle with a bunch of slides and climbing nets. It’s also about how nice and flat and large the place is; perfect for carefree romping about and picnicking. A nice little bonus is the bridge over the railway, where kids can stand and wave at the train drivers, who’ll honk their horns right back at them.
Princes Street, EH2 4AD.

Sort of like a scaled down Eden Project, this place features several interlinked hothouses in which you can immerse yourself in tropical rainforest vibes and get your hands on tarantulas, scorpions and snakes. If that all sounds a bit much, feed the fish or visit the world’s longest-running butterfly house instead. Or, as it’s housed in the grounds of the largest garden centre in Scotland, do a spot of shopping.
Dobbies Garden World, EH18 1AZ. www.edinburghbutterflyworld.com