I get nervous about showing people around Los Angeles, especially those who live outside of the United States. I think it has much to do with the fact that Los Angeles is an urban anomaly. It is one of the most visually represented cities in the world — whether through iconography, as sets in movies and TV or just as a major U.S. city. All these things tend to warp the mind. Visitors come expecting one thing only to see the real thing: A huge mass of a urban/suburban metropolis that goes on forever, has no urban center and seems to be made up more of freeways than specific historical or Hollywood-centric sites.

I think it’s difficult for the passerby to love Los Angeles. It’s like a huge patchwork quilt; from a distant, the city looks like a mess, but up-close, each individual piece has a bit of flavor and color you might otherwise miss. And this is why, I take great care to think about what I show visitors. I want to give them an idea of how massive this city is. It’s not about going to certain buildings or locations, taking a picture and that’s it. Instead, looking at Los Angeles is about taking your time. You want to slowly let the city digest you while you digest the multitude of cells that, when formed together, comprise the gridlock of its arteries.

And yet, even the most carefully laid plans can be surprising, which is what happened this weekend.

My friend “MY” flew into town for a brief 16-hour layover. She’d been in Los Angeles before, but only to Disneyland (God forbid that anyone even think California Adventure is an acceptable substitute to seeing the real L.A.!), and during another brief 6-hour layover a week earlier. Another friend took her to Santa Monica.

It’s funny that despite knowing there are so many things to do in Los Angeles, I spent the evening before calling my “L.A. peeps” for advice. What should we do? Where should I take my friend? Depending on her mood, should we go to Sunset for night life? Hollywood for cheese? La Brea or Santa Monica for food? If she wanted a quiet night, then what? Should we just head back up into the San Fernando Valley for a quiet evening and then brunch the next day? And in all this, what would she tell her friends and family when she returned home? What would she be able to impart to them about my city here in Socal?

I frantically talked to friends, searched websites that I trusted, and finally, I thought I landed the Holy Grail. Glow, a festival of lights, was happening at the Santa Monica Pier. Maybe she’d already been there, but what luck to land a free event and show off a different portrait than that found in The Lonely Planet.

So I drove down to pick her up. I should have known the evening would turn out differently than I had planned when I got this sign: I was stuck in traffic and MY was already off her plane, through customs, had her baggage and awaiting my arrival–all within 15 minutes of landing! I was flabbergasted! Leave it to the rusty wheels of LAX to turn smoothly on the one night I was late!

I picked her up and drove her to Manhatten Beach and The Kettle wherein I received my second sign: Upon leaving the restaurant and driving to Santa Monica, MY realizes she can’t find her camera. I call the restaurant and discover its there, but this severely limits our activity options the following morning. If we have to drive from Northern LA to Southern to pick up her camera and get her to LAX by noon when everything tends to open at 10 AM on a weekend, we’ll just have to make do.

Bad luck, but we arrive at Santa Monica for GLOW, the lights’ festival, which is one show from 7 PM to 7 AM. Despite being midnight, Santa Monica is alive. Restaurants and clubs are open. Families with strollers walk the pier. Scantily clad girls in expensive dresses head toward night clubs, groups of drunk friends linger along the pier, hobos meander along and chat in a neighborly way to one another and the beach is completely overtaken by a horde of faceless people. Who were they? What were their ages? Genders? Reasons for being on the sand at night and in the ocean? Who knows?! But one thing I can tell you is there were no lights.  Yes, sign number three was that I had gotten the date wrong. GLOW was Saturday rather than Friday.

MY couldn’t help laughing, and we were both so tired at this point that we drove back up into the netherlands and to bed.

The next day, my friend wanted to go shopping, but here is a lesson to you non-Americans out there: The magic “open” number is 10. 10 AM. When in doubt, it’s probably 10. But I checked for her (There’s apparently quite a few in Los Angeles!), but she wasn’t impressed. She said that all the stores in the malls were pretty much what she saw in Santa Monica. And this is another lesson to you non-Americans: Every American mall is pretty much the same. Uniform. If you see it in one place, you’ll likely see it in another. Instead, the eclectic shops are hidden in smaller neighborhoods and cities within cities downtown areas. But we couldn’t do any shopping anyway as we had to get back to Manhatten Beach to pick up my friend’s camera.

Really, I felt horrible. Here my friend had come to Los Angeles, and she had seen Santa Monica (twice) and Manhatten Beach (twice). She had gone shopping (twice), and she wasn’t able to get what she really wanted (on account of the “10″ rule).

But here’s something I realized after she left: Even though it didn’t seem like much, my friend got to see the duality and extremism in the city. Santa Monica by day and night as well as Manhatten Beach are polar opposites. By day, Santa Monica and Manhatten are lazy, beachside communities in which people shop, eat and workout. By night, the nightclubs and bars open. The trendsetters emerge, and a younger, hipper crowd takes over. We sampled cuisine, visited a supermarket and drove all over the city — from the north to the south to the extreme west. And really for a short layover like that, what better way was there to experience this city? To take a chance, point your car in a direction and go to see what adventure awaits you wherever the freeway takes you?

And there you go. Note: I’ll finish linking tomorrow. Sleepy time!