The art of aimless wandering

I recently went to an exhibition on John Lennon in Paris. At the moment, there are many compelling shows around town -- Pierre Bonnard at the Museum of Modern Art, Paul Cezanne and Camille Pissarro at the Musee d’Orsay, Henri “Le Douanier” Rousseau at the Grand Palais. But I chose the one at Cite de la Musique, because when Sarah, my 18-year-old niece, visited me a few weeks ago, she reminded me how much I love the Beatles.

For Sarah’s high school graduation, I promised her a trip to France, where I’ve lived the last two years.

She came to France on her first college spring break, carrying with her Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice.” One of her classes this semester is about the 1960s -- my back pages but ancient history to Sarah.

I admittedly don’t know much about teenagers. Do they ever disconnect from their iPods? Will they eat anything other than Big Macs? Is it advisable to let them fly across the Atlantic alone?

But when Sarah emerged from customs and immigration at Charles de Gaulle Airport in mid-March with a political button and only two small carry-on bags, I realized she must have grown up while I wasn’t looking.

The plan was to spend the first night in Paris, then fly to Marseilles and pick up a rental car for a driving tour of Provence, ending at a friend’s house near Avignon.

Driving tours may not be popular in France, but they are in our blood as we’re citizens of a large country addicted to cars and open spaces.

Along the way, we hoped to catch some sun and the beginning of spring in the south of France, as well as a little culture. I told Sarah to bone up on the 14th century, when Pope Clement V abandoned Rome for Avignon, and to read about such artists as Van Gogh and Cezanne, who did some of their most memorable painting in sun-kissed Provence.

Sarah is, of course, my pride and joy. It was a pleasure to see France through her smart, unjaded eyes.

First off, though, she had a bubble bath, a treat because the dorms at college have only showers and she said she was bathtub-deprived. Then we had brunch at the Cafe des Lettres on the Left Bank.

While waiting for the check, I explained a basic rule governing the behavior of servers in France: If you want the bill, they know, even if you don’t ask, and will take as long as possible to bring it.

Then we went to the Musee d’Orsay to see the Cezanne and Pissarro show in preparation for our visit to Aix-en-Provence, Cezanne’s home.

At 18, Sarah has already been to Paris and the D’Orsay many times. I didn’t make my first trip to the City of Light until I was in my early 30s. As a result, she’s far more sophisticated than I was at that age, posing something of a challenge. I wanted to help open her horizons, which, as it turns out, was hardly necessary.

I also wanted to keep her awake after the flight to help her sleep through her first night in a new time zone.

So we later saw “Walk the Line” at a cozy theater near Montparnasse and had dinner at Le Select, where her foreign language skills surfaced. She started studying French before she got a training bra and often understood what was said better than I.

We flew to Marseilles the next day and picked up a silver Renault, of which, as an automobile aficionado, she approved. On the way to Aix, about 40 minutes north of the Marseilles airport, we listened to Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” which she found in my apartment and tucked in her bag. She may not have known that “You Can Call Me Al” was Al Gore’s campaign song in the 2000 presidential campaign, but she served flawlessly as navigator on our way to Hotel Le Pigonnet, where we planned to stay while in Aix.

We were ready for lunch when we got there, but the restaurant in the hotel had closed and couldn’t produce even a ham and cheese baguette.

We did, however, like our connecting rooms, which overlooked a formal garden and Mont Sainte-Victoire, a strange, solitary mountain that Cezanne frequently painted.

We had breakfast in our chambers and two dinners in the hotel’s formal dining room, where part of the cast of “La Doublure,” a new French film starring Daniel Auteuil, had assembled for a publicity event. The waiter, who Sarah thought resembled Pee-wee Herman, told us a basketball team from Moscow was in town and was also staying at the hotel, leading to hopes we would meet some tall, cute, Russian-speaking guys in sweats. Imagine our disappointment when we discovered it was a women’s team.

Aix is a stylish, cultured, university town ruled by the counts of Provence from the 12th to the 15th centuries. We went to the market on the wide, convivial Cours Mirabeau, saw Saint-Sauveur cathedral and hiked up a ridge near the hamlet of Le Tholonet for a smashing view of Mont Sainte-Victoire.

On our third day in Provence, we headed for a little hotel near the Pont du Gard, a three-level Roman aqueduct built around 19 BC about 30 minutes northeast of Nimes.

Along the way, we passed through the northern part of the Camargue, a wild, flat region at the delta of the Rhone River. We thought about going horseback riding in the Camargue, visiting the Roman amphitheater in Arles and boating on the Gardon River, but by the time we reached Le Castellas hostelry in the village of Collias, we wanted nothing more than a nap and dinner.

The waiter at Le Castellas also looked like Pee-wee, although the food was much better than at Le Pigonnet. I introduced Sarah to kir royales, a French aperitif made of Champagne and the cassis-flavored liqueur, and will long cherish the memory of her elegantly sipping from a fluted glass in the parlor.

Neither of us ever got cranky or disagreed about what to do, even though we took each day as it came, without making too many plans. About 10 miles north of Collias, I spotted a Carrefour, the French Wal-Mart. Of course, we had to check it out because we are both material girls. There Sarah found a CD compendium of Beatles music from 1967 to 1970 that played nonstop in the car for the rest of the tour. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” became our theme song, although I had to explain to her that it’s about a killer.

Before joining up with my friend in Avignon, we got to Arles, the Pont du Gard and the lovely town of Uzes, where a Lombardic tower looks a little like the leaning one in Pisa.

It was a very different kind of trip from the ones I take to research my travel stories. This one was relaxed, fun and a little aimless. Cultural enrichment took a back seat to talking about makeup and boyfriends, unless you count our frequent discussions about the Beatles and the 1960s. She’ll get to Cezanne in art history and the Avignon papacy when she studies Western civilization. Meanwhile, we both dissolve in laughter whenever we hear the bang-bang refrain from “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”

Susan Spano also writes “Postcards From Paris,” which can be read at latimes.com/susanspano.

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In Cezanne’s Provence

Hotel Le Pigonnet, 5 Avenue du Pigonnet, Aix-en-Provence; 011-33-4-42-59-02-90, www.hotelpigonnet.com. Doubles $300, April-May, $325, June-September, $160, October-March.

A less expensive and better located choice in Aix is Hotel Cardinal, 24 Rue Cardinale, 011-33-4-42-38-32-30, near the Musee Granet. Doubles from $82.

Le Castellas, Grand Rue, Collias; 011-33-4-66-22-88-88, www.lecastellas.fr, is in a pretty village near the Pont du Gard. Doubles from $96.