Love Romance flowers in Concord

Concord's romance geography is small, walkable in places and genuinely pretty in others, and knowing it helps you pick the delivery address. The Union Street blocks downtown hold the restaurant and bar cluster, with the Cabarrus Brewing Company space in the old Gibson Mill complex on McGill Avenue a short drive away — a date-night district compact enough to walk end to end. The Hector H. Henry II Greenway along Irish Buffalo Creek is where Concord couples actually walk, and Frank Liske Park off Stough Road is where a real share of Cabarrus proposals and engagement photos happen. In December the Speedway Christmas light drive at Charlotte Motor Speedway turns a race track into the county's most-used date night, which is a sentence that makes sense in exactly one place in America. For overnight plans, Embassy Suites by Hilton Charlotte Concord Golf Resort & Spa on John Q. Hammons Drive NW is the big room block, with the Concord Mills hotel cluster behind it — front-desk drops keyed to the reservation surname, and the arrival time in the notes if you want it upstairs before check-in. One warning that is specific to this county: on Coca-Cola 600 weekend in late May, Roval weekend in October, NHRA weekend at zMAX Dragway and both Charlotte AutoFair runs, those hotels are gone and US-29 through the speedway stretch is not a road you want a driver crossing at four in the afternoon. The December light drive has its own version of the same problem — the queue to get into the speedway backs down Bruton Smith Boulevard on weekend evenings, so if the plan is flowers and then the lights, have the arrangement delivered to the house in the morning rather than trying to hand it over in a car in a line of brake lights.