There’s a quiet window in Auckland’s city centre on a Sunday morning. Get in around 10am and the city is still half asleep — which is exactly when we rolled into Aotea Square with three other mums and a pile of small humans for a dose of giant glowing inflatables.

What followed turned into a lovely little loop: Airship Orchestra in Aotea Square, a coffee-and-loos pit stop at Honey on Lorne Street, then a walk down through one of central Auckland’s more underrated public artworks to Myers Park. Two hours, all on foot, and the kids were thoroughly worn out by the end.

Part One — Aotea SquareAirship Orchestra

Airship Orchestra is sixteen huge inflatable characters by Australian art collective ENESS — black-and-white striped, pink-eared, eye-spotted, the tallest reaching around six metres. They glow, hum, and play music that shifts as you wander between them. From a distance they look half-cartoon, half-spaceship; up close they’re surprisingly tactile, and the kids quickly worked out that bouncing off them is allowed.

ENESS do this kind of thing all over the world. Their temporary installations page is worth a scroll if you fall in love with these — there’s always something whimsical going up somewhere.

We arrived just before 10am and had the whole installation almost to ourselves for a solid forty minutes. The kids ran between the characters, explored them, bounced off them. The music is localised to the installation itself rather than spilling across the square — pleasant, slightly otherworldly, and just gentle enough to draw you in closer.

It’s not a big installation. You won’t spend hours there. But what it does, it does beautifully — it brings a wave of joy, and on a quiet Sunday morning that’s worth the trip on its own.

If this is your first time at Aotea Square, you’ll walk in past Waharoa — Selwyn Muru’s enormous carved gateway sculpture. Worth a pause on your way through.

Part Two — Lorne StreetCoffee at Honey

By around 10:45 the kids needed loos and the mums needed caffeine. Most of central Auckland’s cafes are still closed at that time on a Sunday, but Honey — attached to Auckland Public Library on Lorne Street, two minutes’ walk from Aotea Square — was open. Decent counter food, proper fluffies, good coffees, and customer-access bathrooms (you’ll need to ask staff for the door code).

It’s not a destination cafe. It’s a sensible one. Sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

Part Three — The walk downThe Waimahara underpass

Here’s the bit nobody tells you about. The pedestrian underpass between central Auckland and Myers Park is, in fact, one of the city’s most beautiful pieces of public art — and most people walk straight through without looking up.

It’s called Waimahara, an installation led by artist Graham Tipene (Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Hako, Ngāti Manu) and a team of composers. It honours Te Waihorotiu — the stream that still flows beneath the underpass on its way to the Waitēmatā. Curving green mesh forms ripple along the underside of the overpass, hanging fish-shaped vessels glow with shifting light, and a soundscape moves with you as you walk.

There are QR codes set into the wall if you want to learn the waiata composed for the artwork. Walking through it with kids, you don’t really need any of the context — they just look up.

Part Four — Up the stepsMyers Park

Myers Park is one of those Auckland places that feels like a secret even though it’s right in the middle of town. A long, narrow strip of green that runs from Mayoral Drive all the way up to Karangahape Road, it links the CBD to K’ Road via a series of paths and stairways. Mature trees give it a different character from most of central Auckland — an avenue of palms, a huge Moreton Bay Fig, and pūriri offering proper shade in summer.

It’s also full of public art if you take the time to look. There’s the granite Five Goats statue near the playground — gifted by Auckland’s sister city Guangzhou in 1999, in tribute to the Chinese community that once lived around Greys Avenue. And up the hill, at the base of the stairs leading to St Kevin’s Arcade and K’ Road, there’s a full-size replica of Michelangelo’s Moses — donated to the city by Milne & Choyce in 1971. We missed Moses entirely on this visit. Next time.

The playground is a treat. Oversized flower canopies on green steel stems — designed by Isthmus Group around the geometry of flowers in nature, with petals coloured to give a stained-glass effect (not actual glass, as far as I can tell). Slides, weird climbable ribbon-loops in white and lime green. The kids spotted the best detail before any of the adults clocked it: little spiral marble runs mounted on the flower stems, perfect for sending small balls whirling down. Kid-tested, kid-approved.

There’s also a splash pad that runs through summer, 10am–8pm daily — worth keeping in mind for the warmer months. Accessible toilets, drinking fountains, and plenty of bench seating throughout the park.

One thing worth flagging from a local: Myers Park is a daytime park. It’s lovely on a Sunday morning — sunny, busy with families, completely safe. After dark it’s a different vibe, and isn’t somewhere I’d walk through alone at night. If you’re heading back to Aotea Square for Airship Orchestra in the evening, take the longer way round via Queen Street rather than cutting through the park.

Notes for the loop

This whole thing took us about two hours start to finish. We’d happily have stayed longer at the playground.

If you can, hit Sunday before 11am — you’ll have the run of Aotea Square more or less to yourself. Airship Orchestra ends 3 May 2026, so the weekend of 2–3 May is your last chance. Waimahara and Myers Park are permanent fixtures, though, and they alone make the loop worthwhile.

I’m planning to head back to the square one evening before the run ends. The photos I’ve seen of the inflatables lit up after dark look extraordinary — that feels like a completely different outing, and probably the better one if you don’t have small kids in tow.

Worth mentioning: this is a properly low-cost morning out. The installation is free. The playground is free. Parking cost me $9 and the fluffy was $2. By Auckland CBD standards, that’s almost nothing.