School Holidays in Auckland with Kids

By the second week of the school holidays, a house starts to sound different. The craft box has been raided down to the last glue stick, the good ideas ran out somewhere around Thursday, and someone has already asked what's for lunch even though it isn't ten o'clock yet. Sooner or later a grown-up stands in the hallway with a bus card in one hand, says "right, shoes on," and the whole operation heads into town.

This post is about that day. It isn't a list of forty things to cram in before Sunday. It's one good day out in the central city, built around a few free things that are still running this week, and ending somewhere you can sit down while somebody else brings the food. We run two smash burger restaurants in Auckland, one on upper Queen Street at 1/492 Queen Street and one at Shop 1, 12 Jellicoe Street in Wynyard Quarter, and each sits a short walk from the kind of morning that leaves small legs properly tired.

The Term 3 break finishes on Sunday 11 October, so there's one week of it left.

Starting from Queen St

Say it's a Wednesday and the plan is the city. Aotea Square is about a seven-minute walk down Queen Street from us, and for these holidays Auckland Live has filled it with free things to do from 11am to 3pm every day until Sunday: circus workshops, a ukulele jam, puppet and hat making, and outdoor games built at a size that makes everybody look small.

Give that an hour, then wander over to Auckland Art Gallery, about eleven minutes from our door, where the holiday art sessions are free to drop into between 11am and 3pm with no booking, as long as a grown-up stays with the kids. It's the kind of place where an hour disappears quietly, and if the sky turns grey halfway through the morning it doubles as your rainy day plan, because everything happens indoors.

By then somebody will be hungry, and the timing works. From Tuesday to Sunday our Queen St doors open at 12pm, so the square and the gallery fill the morning and lunch arrives right about when patience starts to run out. Mondays are the exception, since we don't open until 5:30pm, so if your city day lands on a Monday, make it a dinner. The full hours are on our locations page, and you can book a table or just walk in.

Starting from Wynyard

Wynyard is a different kind of day, slower and breezier, with the harbour never more than a street away. About four minutes' walk from our door is Silo Park, where the bright yellow pipework from the old harbour fuel tanks has been rebuilt as a free playground, with swings, pipes to balance along, and a few that seem to exist only for making noise. Kids work out what those are for a lot faster than adults do.

If you're down there this weekend, on Saturday 10 or Sunday 11 October, MOTAT is running its tram on a loop around Wynyard Quarter from 10am to 4pm, with four stops to hop on and off and an all-day fare of $4 for adults and $2 for kids. The trams can be held back when the footpaths get busy, so it's worth checking MOTAT's page that morning.

And if Auckland does what Auckland does with the weather, walk about ten minutes over the bridge to the Viaduct and the NZ Maritime Museum, which is free for Auckland residents who bring proof of address. The bridge lifts to let boats through, so leave yourself a few spare minutes.

Our Wynyard hours shift through the week. On Monday and Tuesday we're open for lunch only, from 11:30am, so it's the playground first and an early lunch after. From Wednesday to Friday we open at 11:30am and stay open through dinner, and on the weekend we open at 12pm, which fits neatly after a morning on the tram. You can book a table, walk in, or order ahead for pickup if the kids would rather eat on the grass.

Then you sit down

Both our shops are full-service, with table service and a bar, and on a day like this that matters more than usual. After a morning spent as the timekeeper, the snack bag and the referee, there's real relief in handing the job to someone else for an hour, someone who notices the empty water glass before you do and answers a question about the menu without hurrying you along. We do kids meals too. They're not on the menu, so just ask the crew.

The kitchen doesn't change for the holidays. Every burger starts as a ball of seasoned beef that gets smashed on a hot griddle until the edges go lacy, and it reaches the table the same way it would on any other Wednesday. Have a look at the menu on the way in and ordering goes quicker.

Families have been part of these rooms since before they opened. When we built both shops, our dads were the ones painting the walls and running the data cables through them, so a table full of tired kids at the end of a long day out feels about right to us. If you're bringing a bigger crew, say two families and a nana, groups of 8 or more can email contact@fatpukus.co.nz and we'll take it from there.

On Monday the lunchboxes come back. Until then, run them around, then pull up.

Team Fat Puku's