Love over lunch

Those 60 minutes are precious.

In between e-mails, meetings, memos and clients stands that one hour devoted entirely to you during the workweek: lunch.

Of course you could spend that time running errands, rushing through the drive-through or even ordering a meal with co-workers. (Don't you already see enough of those people, though?)

But if you're lucky enough to work nearby -- or even with -- your sweetheart, you could also be creative and squeeze in a quick rendezvous.

There's no need to get fancy. Instead, you just need to know where to escape all the daily grind for a quick walk, a picnic or even a little culture. Here are some ideas near some of the busiest corporate centers in the suburbs:

• Downtown Arlington Heights is home to scores of restaurants, commercial shops, large corporations (like Motorola's Arlington Heights campus and Bang & Olufsen), and hotels that serve O'Hare Airport.

Just a mile away from all of this bustle, though, at 2201 Windsor Drive, is Arlington Lake. This column has recommended trying sailing lessons there before, but there's no time for that now.

Instead, this is a great spot to bring a picnic lunch with your date and -- if it's a nice day -- squeeze in a two-mile walk around the lake. Parking is a breeze, Lake Arlington has a designated picnic area, and there's even a concession stand in case you need to grab lunch there. For details, visit www.ahpd.org.

• Yes, you know there's tons of shopping and phenomenal restaurants in Schaumburg. But is the mall or a crowded eatery where you really want to create romance? Instead, you could drive about 2.5 miles to the Chicago Athenaeum's International Sculpture Park, just south of the municipal building on Schaumburg Road and Summit Drive.

Open daily until sunset, the park boasts tons of sculptures; sits on 20 acres of meadow, forest and natural prairie; and will give you more to talk about than the taste of your meal. For details, visit chi-athenaeum.org.

• Near Westfield Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills, thousands of workers punch in at companies like CDW, American Hotel, Rustoleum and Zebra Technologies.

When they punch out for lunch, though, they can head to all the fast-food joints and restaurants nearby, or drive just a few blocks north of the mall to the Cuneo Museum at 1350 N. Milwaukee Ave.

The museum and gardens are open to the public daily, except Mondays, although there's no food service.

"In the summer months, the gardens are just beautiful," says spokeswoman Mary Cool. "It's serene and pretty, and I think we're a little undiscovered." Admission is $7 per car and tours of the mansion and grounds are offered at 11 a.m., 1 and 3 p.m. weekdays, or you can do a self-guided tour, too. For details, visit cuneomuseum.org.

• In a village like Oak Brook that has only about 9,000 residents but 100,000 workers, according to the Oak Brook Chamber of Commerce, it's easy to get stuck in the groove doing lunch in its corporate corridor near 22nd Street and Route 83.

To break out of that rut, take a 1.2 mile drive south on Route 83 to visit Mayslake Peabody Estate, which is on 31st Street just west of Route 83.

Yes, it has a picnic area and a one-mile trail.

But it's also home to the mansion of early 20th-century coal magnate Francis Stuyvesant Peabody, which you can explore together and watch workers who are currently restoring its aging interior and brickwork. Much more adventurous than the company lunchroom, we think.

For details, visit dupageforest.com.