Weekend Escape: Laguna Niguel : How the Ritz Rates : Does the Ritz-Carlton--With Its Reputation for Elegance and Service--Live Up to Its Press? Our Writer Visited Anonymously to Find Out.

Ernest Hemingway once said that when he pictured his afterlife, it always looked like the Ritz.

The Ritz. Even the name sounds grand, and not a little bit imposing. So when I set out to find a spot for the perfect second honeymoon, I worried whether the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, might just be too grand for sleepy, stingy, long-married us.

Here, after all, is a resort that has earned both the American Automobile Assn.’s five-diamond designation for eight years and Mobil’s five-star rating for the past seven. With such extravagant reviews, could the place possibly live up to its reputation? (And even if it did, could we possibly afford it?)

Pulling up to the palatial hotel in our faded blue station wagon with the bad brakes and squeaky steering, I had my doubts. For us, a couple of aging baby-boomers who got married in the middle of a wildflower sanctuary, the choice of such a luxurious venue to observe an anniversary was beginning to appear more and more radical. But our last-minute trepedations lasted only as long as it took the doorman, Frank (doubling as bellman), to unload our bags and welcome us to paradise.

Hemingway would have immediately noted the panoramic ocean view, the jewel-like pools, Roman arches and the lobby lined in raw silk. But what first impressed us was that no one noticed the crushed Oreos and single pink slipper on the backseat.

The price--in our case, about $1,000 for the entire weekend--was out of this world. But if you have been saving up for a single glorified weekend and can afford to spend that kind of money without missing a mortgage payment, the Ritz-Carlton here is worth a look.

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We arrived on a Friday in September just before sunset, and what a sunset it was. Layers of orange and pink and purple drifted across the horizon as the deep red sun melted into the sea.

We sat on our private balcony and toasted ourselves with the Mumm’s Cuvee Napa Brut champagne we found waiting in a frosty silver bucket. The champagne lowered our blood pressures, raised our spirits and helped us wash down an entire plate of chocolate-dipped strawberries.

We relaxed at once and promptly forgot about everything except ourselves. I made a note to call the children later for fear I would forget I had children.

This was the moment I had envisioned months earlier when I called about rooms for a special celebration weekend. As it happened, the Ritz had exactly that: “The Celebration” package.

From $295 per night on Friday and Saturday, the package offered a garden or courtyard room, dinner for two with wine in the medium-priced Terrace restaurant, and use of the hotel’s fitness center, sauna and steam room. (The hotel’s gourmet menu is served in the higher-priced dining room, where the fixed-priced tab for a seven-course meal with wines runs $96 per person.) We paid extra (about $65 per night more than the starting price) for two nights in an ocean-front room. The champagne and strawberries came with the hotel’s compliments.

What was not complimentary was parking for our car. (And that wasn’t just because it was old and unwashed. I asked.) We were charged $15 for a valet to park our car about 25 yards from a 25-cents-an-hour metered beach lot.

On the other hand, we were charged not one cent for my husband to park his golf clubs in our room. He never did get onto the nearby Robert Trent Jones-designed Monarch Beach Golf Links, but was consoled by the fact that our room--and every Ritz-Carlton room--gets the ESPN channel on TV.

Our first morning, we awoke at dawn, because the bedside clock-radio alarm went off.

We didn’t set the alarm, but the sunrise was so beautiful and the music so peaceful (the WAVE, naturally), that we never turned it off. On this first morning, we awoke to see a man and woman kissing at the edge of the bluff. “Do you think they were hired to do that?” my husband asked.

We never inquired, but there is no question that the hotel does its best to make everyone’s dream at least seem to come true.

Our room--number 3522--was in the middle of the main floor, just down the hall from the library. When we opened the balcony doors, and the white chiffon curtains billowed out, the room seemed to expand right out to the blue horizon. If you like Italian marble, you will love the marble-tiled bathrooms at the Ritz-Carlton. The soft white towels with the embroidered Ritz-Carlton lion’s head crest are heaven-sent but too thick to fit in your suitcase.

But the staff of this hotel seemed nothing if not trusting. The hair dryers were not attached to the wall, and the scales, which automatically subtracted five pounds from my true weight, were not bolted to the floor.

In the mahogany-paneled library, a proper English tea is served every afternoon and proper imported cigars are smoked every evening after dinner. One of us sampled the afternoon tea (for $18, a choice of teas not in bags, and a meal-size platter of finger sandwiches, scones and tiny pastries), and one of us sampled the evening smoke (puffing guilt-free on a $5 H. Upmann Monarch Tube cigar).

While the restaurants and buffets are lovely and elegant, taking all one’s meals there can become tedious--or as my husband said, expensive--after a day or two. So we did some exploring and found that we could eat al fresco elsewhere on the beach and pay a lot less than we would at the hotel.

On an early Saturday morning walk from our room, down the resort’s sweeping outdoor stairs and along the sidewalks that skirt the cliffs, we discovered a snack shack just above the high tide line on Salt Creek Beach. There, we joined an eclectic band of surfers chowing down on breakfast sandwiches and burritos. For under $5, we ate, drank juice and sipped shockingly strong coffee while watching the surfers push their bright-colored boards into the waves.

And if you eat too much or just feel lazy, the hotel provides a little tram to haul hotel guests back up the hill. I am proud to report that we walked, but the effort did demand a long nap later.

It wasn’t our first nap, or our last. Until we had children, napping was something we did often and well. So between reminiscences about those good old days, we indulged ourselves with long rests and sunbaths on our private waterfront balcony--the only one with its own bougainvillea tree.

On Sunday, we stopped sleeping long enough to drive to Laguna Beach, about 10 miles north on Pacific Coast Highway. (The hotel is actually located in the city of Dana Point.) There we lunched at the Village Market and Cafe, where a Calistoga water, with lemon wedge, is just 90 cents and a plate of Dungeness crab nachos big enough for two cost $11.25.

This restaurant, which has benches as well as tables perched high above the beach, is known locally for being the home of the famous Hav ‘A’ Chip corn chips. Although we visited before the Laguna Beach fires, the restaurant (and its store of healthy chips, presumably) is still in business.

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Although the Ritz-Carlton chain in the United States is a product of a series of American hotel mergers and is no longer directly connected to the Ritz hotels on the other side of the Atlantic, the hotel company enjoys a reputation among the rich and famous similar to its renown in Europe. Former presidents Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan all have slept in the Ritz-Carlton where we stayed--as has the rich-and-famous meister himself, Robin Leach. New York hotel queen Leona Helmsley found a night or two of quiet in a suite here a few years ago while she waited to be sentenced for tax evasion. According to a hotel employee, she found the experience “smashing”--which no doubt came as a great relief to all the “little people.”

In fact, Ritz-Carlton hotels insist they operate as if there are no “little people.” And so it seems. The corporate motto is “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” We discovered that there are two Ritz employees for every room, which works out to about one staffer per guest--twice the national average. And every applicant for a job here is reportedly interviewed by at least three people and only candidates with “wonderful dispositions” are chosen.

Among the staff members we met, that certainly seemed to be the case. Then again, we had pretty wonderful dispositions ourselves. Our moods soured only when it became apparent after 48 hours that we would actually have to go home.

During the recent fires that ravaged Laguna Beach, the hotel awarded gift certificates to eight lucky firefighters to spend two nights each at the hotel.

No doubt, they will be back. And so will we.

Budget for Two

Gas to, from Laguna Niguel: $ 17.00

Ritz-Carlton, two nights: 823.55

Meals: 123.50

Tea: 19.00

Cigar: 5.00

Parking: 15.00

FINAL TAB: $1,003.05

The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, 33533 Ritz Carlton Drive, Dana Point 92629; tel. (714) 240-2000