My advice would be to not get too set on any specific piece of gear before knowing what is actually available. Just keep an eye out on craigslist, local thrift stores, local flea markets, local garage sales, etc. When seeking out a specific piece of gear, you will be lucky to ever find it, and if you do, you will probably end up paying a price premium for it. If you just keep an eye open and keep checking around, eventually a good piece will find you.
One thing I would suggest is looking into separates. Their modular nature makes things very flexible. For example, you could start out with a lower-end receiver, and then add a power amp to it, using the receiver as a preamp.
As far as recommended WPC for your L36 speakers and whatever you end up powering them with, that can be a complicated question. It depends a lot on the content for one. The 125a woofers in the L36 aren't terrible, but they aren't sub-woofers. It can be fairly easy to push the woofer beyond it's limits with low-frequency content. If you are talking about clean power and content that doesn't reach too low they should be able to handle a fair amount of power. Overall too much power is better than not enough power. A receiver or amp doesn't just hit it's limit kindly and softly when it runs out of power; it begins to clip. Clipping can cause damage to a speaker more easily than overpowering it with clean power. It should not be much of an issue either way as long as you use common sense and turn the volume down if/when you hear distortion.