ROMANCE : It’s Where You Find It, and It’s All About L.A.

Just the two of you, driving along the beach at sunset, Mathis or Sinatra on the stereo, a picnic basket holding a chilled bottle of champagne, soft conversation, a few adoring looks.

The perfect picture of Romance. But when life is filled with deadlines, car pools, unreturned phone calls, traffic jams and countless daily details, who has the time? And even if you did, is Los Angeles really the place?

Absolutely, say the romance experts.

Leo Buscaglia, an author who writes a newspaper column on relationships, says, “It’s so easy to get caught up in the trivia of life. Yet time alone, away from the kids and other demands, is one of the most essential things for keeping a relationship going.”

“It’s a health issue as much as a love issue,” says author Nathaniel Branden, who, besides having written four books on human relationships, is director of the Biocentric Institute in Los Angeles. “Couples should (take time away for romance) at least every six weeks.”

As for Los Angeles’ reputation for not being romantic, contends Robert Badal, “it’s not that the city isn’t. It’s that the people aren’t. You have to want to see the romance. It’s like going to a magic show. You have to want not to see the wires.”

Badal conducts a class called “50 Romantic and Unusual Things to Do in Los Angeles” at a number of Southland colleges, among them Santa Monica College and Los Angeles City College.

“You just have to view this city like the Emerald City, like a big wonderland,” he says.

And go somewhere you’d never normally go.

Consider, for instance:

--A Grand Adventure. No way can you miss with a hot-air balloon ride. Drifting over the countryside in the hours just after sunrise or before sunset, your concerns float farther and farther away. Depending on the company and where you take off from, rates range from $100 to $145 per person for an hour’s ride and always include champagne at ride’s end. Among the “air lines”: A Balloon Ride Adventure, (213) 451-4233, which takes off from Moorpark; Great American Balloon Co., (800) 272-3631, which leaves from a number of Southern California locations; and Air Affair Enterprises, (619) 560-1979, which is out of San Diego and offers coastal or wine country scenery.

--A Cruise. On a slightly less extravagant level, visit California’s version of the Isle of Capri, Santa Catalina Island. Boats leave regularly during the summer from San Pedro, dropping passengers at the island’s only town, Avalon, as picturesque as a Hollywood movie set with lots of restaurants, hotels and gift shops winding up into the hills. Besides swimming and sunning, there’s boating, fishing, hiking and some picturesque horseback trails. In the evenings, there are sunset cruises, concerts and movies in Catalina’s landmark, the Casino, which chewing-gum king William Wrigley Jr. built originally for ballroom dancing.

Go the weekend of Sept. 19 and you’ve got Avalon’s annual art festival, which includes a performance by the Los Angeles Civic Orchestra at the Casino. Island Marketing, (800) 443-8988, has put together a package for that weekend: $190 per person, which includes round-trip transportation, two nights in a hotel, admission to the concert and two island tours. Other weekends, let the island’s Visitor’s Bureau take care of you. Their one-call-does-it-all number is (213) 510-1520.

--A Moonlit Ride. For great romantic imagery, try an evening horseback ride in the Hollywood Hills. You don’t have to be the Singing Cowboy for this. Sunset Hollywood Stable, (213) 469-5450, conducts four-hour guided rides every Friday evening. Cost is $25 per person. Along the way, there’s a 90-minute pay-your-own-tab dinner break at Viva Restaurant in Glendale.

--A Gondola Getaway. For $45 per couple, you’ve only to lean back and enjoy while a gondolier guides you through the canals of Naples . . . down by Long Beach, that is. Since this is an hour for amore , the gondola folk provide the glasses and a basket filled with cheese, salami and bread. You provide the wine; (213) 433-9595.

--A Hotel Hideaway. Rosemarie Stack, married 31 years to actor Robert Stack, says they’ve been doing this ever since the week all their children came down with the same illness. Then it was the Bel-Air Hotel, she says, but since then “we go for different ones. It’s just so nice to change the atmosphere. A woman feels like she’s getting special attention. It’s like courting again even though you’re married. We order room service and just stay in. There’s something kind of naughty about it.”

The hotels make this kind of weekend very easy. Most large ones--including the Sheratons, Westin Hotels, Marriotts and Hiltons--offer special weekend rates that often include breakfast, dinner and limo service. For a change of pace, try the Mediterranean opulence of the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, the exotic Japanese-style suites at the New Otani, the always-discreet attention-to-detail of the Beverly Wilshire, the decadence of the Seal Beach Inn’s “Chocolate Love Inn,” or the incomparable romanticism of the Eastlake Inn, a Victorian bed and breakfast in old Los Angeles.

Or head up the coast to Malibu for a night at Casa Larronde, that sumptuous bread and breakfast at 22000 Pacific Coast Highway. Nothing but great views there, plus lots of stars as neighbors. And for the ultimate, try the Hotel Bel-Air, probably the most romantic inn in town. Raves Elizabeth Burns, a Westside interior designer, “It’s so secluded, so otherworldly. It provides an atmosphere that leaves you free to absorb the other person.”

--An Intimate Stroll. Inherently romantic, hand-in-hand walking can take you through the shady, oak-lined walkways of Descanso Gardens, the antic craziness of Main Street in Venice, the serenity of San Marino’s Huntington Gardens, the enchantment of Carroll Avenue with its Victorian homes, the oh-so-hip Melrose Boulevard, the glitz of extravagant Rodeo Drive, the tranquility of the endlessly rolling meadows in Topanga State Park or the ultimate romanticism of the Getty Museum--even with crowds one of the most romantic places in Los Angeles. For slightly sturdier yet not too strenuous walks, try the San Ysidro Trail out of Montecito, with a waterfall and semi-tropical rain forest, or the Point Dume Headlands, a 35-acre state preserve where you’ve the option of whale-watching or meandering to the end of the trail and Pirates Cove Beach.

--A Nostalgic Ride. Attorney Marvin Mitchelson and his wife, Marcella, who have been married 26 years, like to drive the length of Wilshire or Sunset boulevards or return to the old neighborhoods where Mitchelson grew up. “I tell Marcella all these stories about what it was like, how life was simpler then,” he says. “To remember the city as it was is very romantic to me.”

--Special Moments. Candlelight has its uses. Lockheed executive Tom Lewis and his wife, Helen, recall the time they pretended they were caught in a power blackout and did everything that evening by candlelight or at the fireplace.

Rosemarie Stack remembers all those evenings when her husband was working on “The Untouchables” and would be filming car chases at 2 a.m. “I’d go down with a picnic basket and the candlesticks and just set up where we could find some quiet.”

Playboy Enterprises executive vice president Dick Rosensweig, who’s been married five years “but together for 20” with public relations representative Judy Henning, even advocates the grand gesture. He’s been known to hire a string quartet from UCLA or an English harpist for romantic evenings at home.

Judy Davidson, married 28 years to Center Theater Group director Gordon Davidson, says their time alone is so rare that staying in on a weekend seems the most romantic of possibilities.

“Gordon goes out for bagels and lox; for lunch he brings in vegetables from his garden for a salad. Maybe in the evening, we’ll take a walk down to Les Anges, which is near where we live,” she says. “But just to be able to see him seems romantic. I don’t need the candlelight.”