For our second day in Venice, we went to St. Mark's, the island of Murano, and the island of San Giorgio.
We started the day with the wonderful Hotel Serenissima breakfast, which included bruschetta, ham-and-cheese mini croissants, yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, the best scrambled eggs we had on our trip, fresh fruit, croissants, orange juice, and good coffee.  It was so good!
After breakfast, we went to St. Mark's Basilica and toured the church, museum, and rooftop.  We then went back to the hotel, got our backpacks, and headed out.  Our first stop was the Rialto Bridge.	It was so fun to see all the traffic on the Grand Canal!
A panorama of the Grand Canal traffic.
I came to Venice for the second time ready to lay down the 80 euros for a gondola ride but changed my mind when I saw the log-jam of gondolas :(  So we settled on a traghetto ride across the grand canal for 4 euros instead.  Notice I am wearing my brand-new hat, purchased just a few minutes before!	I can say I've been in a gondola on Venice's Grand Canal!
We're on our way!	We walked from the Rialto Market traghetto stop to the Fonadamente Nove vaporetto stop, bought a 24-hour vaporetto pass for 20 euros ($27), and took the vaporetto to the island of Murano.
We bought picnic supplies at the supermarket near the Murano Colonna stop (sliced ham, sliced cheese, sliced bread, potato chips, strawberries, and Sprite, all for 7.37 euros ($10), and ate our picnic lunch at the little park up the street from the lighthouse.	After lunch, we walked to see the lighthouse, walked back to the Murano Colonna vaporetto stop, and took the vaporetto back to the San Zaccharia stop.
We then took the vaporetto over to San Giorgio so we could climb the church's bell tower.	Turns out you take an elevator to the top, not the stairs!
The views from the top of the bell tower were amazing.  That's San Marco in the background!
We could see so much of where we had walked!
After San Giorgio, we walked on Giudecca Island for a few minutes, then took the vaporetto back to San Zaccharia.  We then walked west through the Giardini Reali to the Accademia Bridge.  We enjoyed just strolling the back "streets" of Venice and ended up finding this gondola workshop near San Trovaso!
The previous night, we had seen this sign and found this cool spiral staircase!  Oddly enough, it made me feel like I was in Barcelona :)
We ate at Al Vaporetto again.  I had the vegetariana pizza, and my mother had the French fry pizza!
After dinner, we dropped nearly everything at our hotel, grabbed out 24-hour vaporeto passes, took the vaporetto #2 from Rialto to the train station, and caught the next #2 vaporetto going from the train station to San Marco.  It was so fun to see everything after dark!