re: Lavinia's post #6, 1), can you visualize z --> z^2, for complex z: |z| = 1?
and I guess a continuous map between "nice" spaces (locally compact and Hausdorff?) should be a finite covering map if and only if it is a local homeomorphism, surjective and proper.
In fact since a continuous bijection of compact hausforff spaces is a homeomorphism, maybe even a locally bijective proper continuous map of locally compact hausdorff spaces is a finite covering of its image. So if "one to one" means "bijective", as it sometimes does, then this is why I was thinking of covering spaces as soon as I heard proper, continuous and locally one to one. I.e. that is essentially equivalent to "finite covering".