"You can't get lost in Venice," one of the guides told us, "It's an island!" While that may be true, you can still take a lot of detours, and discover numerous dead ends!
I'd set out to run this course, an 8 mile jog around Venice. Unfortunately, with no internet access to zoom in and see street names, I could only go on memory. "No matter," I thought, "I know the main points I need to visit, I'm sure I'll figure it out". That turned out to be mostly wishful thinking: once you're in the maze of Venetian canals and streets, it's really easy to take a wrong turn. The worst mistake I made was in the north east corner of the city where I had to retrace my steps considerably.
I did have some good luck though. Just after Piazza San Marco (the main tourist attraction) I ran into our landlord (pun intended) as he was walking to work. Carlo was very helpful and gave me directions to the bridge that would take me to the southern part of Venice. There I made my second big mistake. I ran so far west that I came to a road... with cars! Which was worrying... There aren't any roads and cars in Venice. Turns out I was in the port. Oops! :-) Fortunately a busload of friendly polizia set me on the right path again.
In the end none of this mattered: It was a great run and I got to see more of beautiful Venice than I ever could have otherwise.
