Vagabond Valentines: Six Romantic Retreats : Getaways: Couples may also find some lovable prices during long holiday weekend at lodgings in San Francisco, Santa Cruz area, Cambria and Ventura.

Valentine’s Day comes with a bonus this year. Thanks to Presidents Day on Feb. 15, the holiday falls in the middle of a three-day weekend, a happenstance likely to inspire a boom in romantic retreating. With an eye toward that weekend--and toward any other getaway opportunity in weeks or months to come--the Chicago-based travel newsletter Passport has some ideas. So do I.

Me first. Here, skipping down the coast from north to south, is a foursome of romantic yet reasonable lodgings that I’ve stayed in or walked through in the last two years. Some may already be fully booked for the weekend of the 14th, but they’re worth keeping in mind for next month, or next year.

* San Francisco, near the wharf. The Tuscan Inn opened in June, 1990, offering 221 rooms on the site of an old cannery at Northpoint and Mason streets, two blocks from Fisherman’s Wharf. Aiming for an intimate European mood, the Tuscan has a fireplace in its lobby, and offers its guests Italian coffee, tea and biscotti there every morning. Stopping by one evening to visit relatives (who pronounced their stay there pleasant), I found “the wine hour” in progress--free lobby service for guests. There’s no pool, but within a few blocks are the shops of Pier 39 and Ghirardelli Square and the waterfront cable car turnaround at Taylor Street. Standard rates begin at $148 for double rooms, $198 for junior suites. Two year-round specials are worth noting: The “Stay and Mangia” package ($129-$189 per night, depending on rooms and occupancy) includes a room for two, a $25 meal or drink credit at the first-rate Cafe Pescatore downstairs and free overnight parking (which is otherwise $13); the “Romeo and Juliet” package (starting at $169) includes the $25 food or drink credit, a bottle of wine, two keepsake glasses, free parking, a red rose at check-in, gourmet chocolates and bubble bath soap. And since Valentine’s Day falls on Sunday this year, guests that weekend can arrange for checkout as late as 6 p.m. for no extra charge.

The Tuscan Inn, 425 Northpoint, San Francisco 94133; (800) 648-4626 or (415) 561-1100, fax ( 415 ) 561-1199.

* Bed, breakfast and beach, north of Santa Cruz. Forgive them for the length of their name. The New Davenport Cash Store, Restaurant and Bed & Breakfast, a 12-room enterprise, is perched on a bluff above the Pacific, 10 miles north of Santa Cruz and 40 miles south of Half Moon Bay. Davenport, which sustains a population of about 200, is an old whaling village and the Cash Store is its spiritual and commercial hub. Owners Bruce and Marcia McDougal arrived about 15 years ago, took over the site of an old general store, and set out first to run a pottery school. “It evolved,” reports B&B; manager Doreen Devorah.

Now, on the shoulder of California 1 stands a varied operation. Downstairs, there’s a craft shop with imports and work of local artisans, and a restaurant with American cuisine (entrees around $12-$15) and acoustic performers. Upstairs, there are eight rooms with private baths and French doors that open onto a common veranda with ocean views. Interiors, clearly the product of more attention than most hotel rooms get, are a global mix of craftwork and colorful textiles. Room rates for two run $90-$95 nightly, except for the larger corner suite, which includes a double bed and a queen bed and fetches $115. In a cottage next door, without ocean views, are four more units, which run $60-$75 nightly. Breakfast is part of the deal. There’s a path down to the beach just across the coast highway, and about 10 miles north are Big Basin Redwoods State Preserve and Ano Nuevo State Preserve, which this time of year often features a special treat: the sight and sound of mating elephant seals.

Davenport Cash Store / Bed & Breakfast, Box J , Davenport 95017; (408) 425-1818, or 426-4122 for the restaurant.

* Cambria, by the sea. There are about 15 hotels along waterfront Moonstone Beach Drive in Cambria, pine-studded hillsides rising beyond them into the mist. The Fog Catcher Inn is the newest of the lot, having opened in April, 1992, and the most striking. Its walls are lined with stones, and its roof was built of thatch-style shingles that look like they’ve been imported from the English countryside. The inn includes 60 units, but somehow holds onto the feel of a smaller place, its interiors filled with country pine furniture and stone-front fireplaces. Full breakfasts in the dining area are included in the room rates, and an 87- degree swimming pool lies at the ready. Room rates for couples usually run $80-$135 on weekends and in summer, $10 less at other times.

The Fog Catcher Inn, 6400 Moonstone Beach Drive, Cambria 93428; (800) 445-6868 or (805) 927-1400.

* A low profile, south of Santa Barbara. The yellow sign may suggest that this is just another roadside stop. The boxy building (vintage 1947) may not be flashy. And offshore oil rigs do intrude on the ocean views to the north and south. But the Cliff House Inn, 15 miles south of Santa Barbara and 10 miles north of Ventura--right on Pacific Coast Highway--is worth investigating. Local lore holds that the property was once a brothel for oil workers, and later an apartment complex dominated by hard-partying students. But for the last 12 years, the Cliff House has been doing business as a getaway hotel, and a romantic one. The ocean roars loudly. A mist often hangs low over the coast. Each of 24 rooms has at least a partial ocean view. I have not spent a night here, but I did walk through several rooms. The best, Number 1, includes a gas fireplace, whirlpool bathtub for two and a floor-to-ceiling picture-window view of the sea. The 5-year-old downstairs restaurant, The Shoals, where I have dined several times, features continental dishes and uses bananas from a neighboring plantation in its desserts. Entrees run $13-$17. Room rates for couples: $80-$150 holidays and weekends, $65-$140 weeknights.

The Cliff House, 6602 W. Pacific Coast Highway, Ventura 93001 ; (800) 892-5433 or (805) 652-1381, fax (805) 652-1201.

The Passport people, who concentrate on luxury vacations, are thinking bigger. The list they sent out recently is full of travels likely to last longer than a weekend and reach far beyond California. Some seem more prudent than others: Never mind their proposed escape to exotic Oman, just south of the Persian Gulf. But here are two intriguing prospects:

* Rural New York state. The Beekman Arms, set in the rolling Hudson River Valley, bills itself as the nation’s oldest continuously operated inn. Dating back to 1766, the inn does business amid the antique shops and Colonial architecture of Rhinebeck, N.Y. Ten miles to the south, in the town of Hyde Park, lie the Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Vanderbilt mansions. As of last week, the area lay under six inches of snow. The Beekman Arms offers 59 rooms in 10 buildings at nightly rates of $70-$140. Last summer, acclaimed New York chef Larry Forgione (creator of An American Place on Park Avenue in New York City) took over the inn’s restaurant, Beekman 1766 Tavern, where entrees run roughly $14-$22.

The Beekman Arms, 4 Mill St., Rhinebeck, N . Y . 12572eck,; phone or fax (914) 876-7077.

* A British Columbian island. It’s cheating to include this place, since it’s closed until the end of February, but the Passport people did, and the lodgings sound attractive enough that I will, too. The Canadian Gulf Islands lie sheltered between Vancouver Island and Vancouver, occasionally getting snow in winter, usually seeing summertime highs around 75 degrees. Among them lies Mayne Island, reachable by ferry from Victoria and Vancouver. The Oceanwood Country Inn, on Mayne Island, is a Tudor-style home full of pine and wicker furniture. Seven of the eight rooms face the sea, some rooms include whirlpool tubs for two and woodburning fireplaces. Room rates vary from $90 to $145, rising to $100-$165 in summer, and include breakfast and afternoon tea. Fixed-price, four-course dinners run $29. The landscape outside may include bald eagles, Canada geese and deer. Owners Jonathan and Marilyn Chilvers, who have been there three years, are busy stenciling the dining room walls now, but plan to open for the year on Feb. 26.

Oceanwood Country Inn, 630 Dinner Bay Road, Mayne Island, B.C. V0N2J0; (604) 539-5074 or fax (604) 539-3002.

Finally, a call for help.

Los Angeles International Airport, well-known but not necessarily beloved by readers of this section, came under the supervision of a new general manager last month. If you have any suggestions for him--hirings? firings? practices to begin or abolish? physical features to change? scandals to disclose? new hues for the hallways?--please send them here for treatment in a future column. The address: Airport Advice, Travel Insider, Travel Section, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053.