Anniversary flowers in Covington

Covington has an anniversary geography most cities its size cannot match, and the reason is the view. Stand anywhere along the Covington riverfront and you are looking across the Ohio at the full Cincinnati skyline, which is why the hotels here sell rooms on what they face rather than what they contain. Hotel Covington at 638 Madison Avenue is the anchor — the 1907 Coppin's department store, a landmark retail building brought back as a hotel, with its restaurant on the ground floor and a courtyard behind. Two blocks west on RiverCenter Boulevard, the Marriott Cincinnati at RiverCenter and Embassy Suites Cincinnati RiverCenter face the river directly and take the bulk of the out-of-town anniversary stays; the Radisson Hotel Cincinnati Riverfront on West Fifth Street is the round tower with the revolving restaurant on top, which is a specific kind of anniversary dinner that the people who grew up here remember from the first time. For a room delivery at any of them, the front desk takes the arrangement and holds it for check-in, or housekeeping places it in the room when the reservation allows — give us the reservation name and the check-in date, because a hotel will not hold flowers for a guest it has no record of.

The dinner is usually within walking distance of the room, and Main Street in MainStrasse Village is where most anniversary tables are. Bouquet Restaurant at 519 Main Street has the name everyone in this business notices and the seasonal Kentucky menu that put the block on the map; Otto's at 521 Main is next door; Frida 602 and Wunderbar are a short walk; Libby's Southern Comfort on West Eighth Street and Riverside Korean at 512 Madison Avenue pull the rest of the evening trade. A table delivery works differently from a room delivery and needs a phone call: restaurants of this size have no cooler and no storage, so the arrangement arrives shortly before the reservation and goes onto the table or behind the host stand. Something compact is the only sensible choice — a tall hand-tied on a two-top is a wall between two people. For larger celebrations, the Drees Pavilion in Devou Park sits on the hillside with the skyline laid out below it and is Covington's standing choice for a milestone reception, while The Carnegie at 1028 Scott Boulevard and the Madison Theater at 730 Madison Avenue take the events that want a stage rather than a view.

Plenty of Covington anniversaries never leave the neighbourhood, and the house routes matter as much as the hotels. Licking Riverside along Riverside Drive is the historic strip of restored Italianate and Federal houses facing the Licking River, with narrow parking and doors set above deep steps. Wallace Woods and Old Seminary Square hold the city's other concentration of long-owned homes. South and west, Park Hills, Fort Wright, Fort Mitchell and Lakeside Park are where couples who raised families in Covington tend to be now, and those are straightforward driveway deliveries. Then there is the anniversary this market sees more of than most: the fiftieth and the sixtieth, delivered to a care community rather than a house. St. Charles Community in Covington and Rosedale Green in Latonia both take flowers at a front desk, and Carmel Manor stands on the Fort Thomas bluff. For those, ask for a compact vase design rather than anything tall, give the resident's full name with a room or wing, and expect the desk to sign — it is the same courtesy that makes the delivery land, and it is the difference between the flowers reaching a bedside table and sitting in a lobby.