Getting underway from a busy (foreign) city centre has always been a kind of lottery for me.

I start in what I assume to be the proper direction and watch the screen as it either recalculates a new route or displays the arrow travelling according to plan.

Usually works well. But yesterday took a couple of minutes because streets were many, narrow and anything but like an American grid, there were many one ways and the route took a long time to recalculate.

There must be a better solution. Suggestions?

You should try getting around in Boston. A lot of the streets aren't signed and even if they are signed, the name of the street is likely to change every few blocks. Plus there is no grid; everything just curves. That is both Boston's charm and curse.

A gps is helpful. So is a kind of dead reckoning by relying on landmarks to figure out whether or not you are more or less going in the right direction. Use a paper map to figure out what the major landmarks and get a sense of direction. The gps may be largely idiot proof but isn't much help in orienting you in space.

This one of the less important reasons I don't yet own a GPS--the screen is too small and difficult to orient to the real world. But I like the technology, and if I get a chance to so some homework first I'll use Google Maps to find a route and either print it out or trace it onto a paper map. Or find a bike shop or someone on a bike and ask. Who knows--maybe you'll get a personal tour guide, a new friend, and maybe even an offer of a place to stay. All have happened to me.

Detailed paper map of the city? If it's a popular tourist destination you can often get one for free.

If you are in between tall buildings on a narrow road, it can be very difficult to get a GPS fix because your GPS might only receive signals from straight up or along the axis of the road you are on, but not from the sides. In downtown Chicago while sitting under a elevated train when I was stopped at a stoplight, my GPS lost all signals. And the only way I could get a new location fix on my GPS was to pull into a parking lot where signals from more satellites could be received. I had similar problems in downtown Pittsburgh leaving from the Amtrak station, between tall buildings at a stop light, my GPS lost location and had trouble getting a new location until I traveled several blocks to get away from the taller buildings. I got lost in the old town of Prague Czech Republic while walking on very narrow streets between buildings when my GPS gave up even trying to figure out where I was. In cases like this, the best option is a GPS that has a better antennae. My older Etrex series Garmin GPS units are pretty bad at this, but my Garmin 62S has an outstanding antennae.

If your problem is the complexity of calculating a new route, if you shorten the distance of your route by just trying to get to the edge of the city at a point where you would travel past anyway, instead of entering your final destination, enter that location at the edge of town. Once there, enter your final destination.

Have you considered setting the GPS to keep North at the top instead of the direction that you happen to be travelling? That may make it easier to figure out which way it is saying you should be going.

Getting into a city is typically not too difficult because one can always ask directions to "center".

For the reverse, one possibility to try, particularly if you have a GPS, is to pick a particular waypoint that is at least along the direction you wish to go, e.g. "airport" or "stadium". Ask folks for directions to that better known landmark and as your travels get further, then you can adjust the GPS location to be closer to your intended location.

Depending on where we are touring, my wife and I sometimes bring a dedicated GPS. We used it extensively prior to the availability of smart phones. It is great for getting out of larger cities. In countries that have Google Map bike data, we found our phones are much easier to use, and are faster than a GPS unit. Once the route map is downloaded and saved the phone can be changed to "airplane" mode so you are not using relatively expensive data or incurring roaming charges. While Google Maps are not always reliable without a paper map verification, they will usually get you in and out of big cities just fine.

We use MapMyRide Maps for most route planning.