Navigating Venice by map

This is the map the hotel gave us:

It captures pretty much every walkable path in the city. And since there are no cars or bikes, that means pretty much everywhere you can go. Like all good design, the map's features emphasize important details like which waterbus lines pick up at which stations, and minimize unimportant ones. 

Sure, you have your choice of being a sucker tourist by consulting your GPS every minute or looking at your paper map, but at least the map works a different part of your brain. 

We were able to walk most of the city north to south at night using the map. The city helpfully cooperates by posting up street and square names on most corners, like so:

Between these signs announcing the area you're stepping into and the extremely regular density of walkable paths, the walking experience quite felt like a video game. Taking the wrong path and stumbling into some steps descending into the canal, with no getaway gondola waiting for you -- you only have your poor map-reading skills to blame.