uart - STM32 send from UART3 and receive on UART2

I thought to create a simple test to send and receive a buffer via UART. I succeeded in sending bytes from my PC to the nucleo bord and receiving them in blocking and non-blocking mode. But for some reason I can't succeed to send data from UART3 and receive the bytes on UART2.

I have a nucleo-f103rb and have the following pins setup:

• UART2: tx=PA2;rx=PA3


• UART3: tx=PB10;rx=PB11

And then the following code:

  while (1)
  {
    /* USER CODE END WHILE */

    /* USER CODE BEGIN 3 */
    if (HAL_UART_Transmit(&huart3, send, 2, 1000) == HAL_OK)
    {
        if (HAL_UART_Receive(&huart2, receive, 2, 1000) == HAL_OK)
        {
            HAL_GPIO_TogglePin(GPIOA, LD2_Pin);
        }
    }
  }

All the boiler plate is generated using cube mx. So the UART 2 and 3 are all default, same for the button pins.

• I connected the transmit pin of uart3 to the receiving pin of uart2


• I connected the receive pin of uart3 to the transmitting pin of uart2 (while not used in this trivial example though)

What am I missing here?

Update

As comments and answers suggested, I shouldn't be using the blocking mode approach. So I rewrote it slightly to rely more on interrupts.

I attached a callback to the nucleo blue button

void HAL_GPIO_EXTI_Callback(uint16_t GPIO_Pin)

{
    if (GPIO_Pin == B1_Pin)
    {
        HAL_UART_Transmit_IT(&huart3, (uint8_t *)send, 2);
    }
}

And I added a callback for receiving stuff over uart

void HAL_UART_RxCpltCallback(UART_HandleTypeDef *huart)
{

  /* Prevent unused argument(s) compilation warning */
  UNUSED(huart);

  /* NOTE : This function should not be modified, when the callback is needed,
            the HAL_UART_RxCpltCallback can be implemented in the user file
   */

     // Toggle the pin to see some proof that I received something
     HAL_GPIO_TogglePin(LD2_GPIO_Port, LD2_Pin);


     // Resubscribe uart2
     HAL_UART_Receive_IT(&huart2, (uint8_t *)receive, 2);
}

In the main function I call the interrupt so that the callback is active.

while (HAL_UART_Receive_IT(&huart2, receive, 2) != HAL_OK);

__NOP();
while (1)
{

}

Again, when debugging through I do end up in the button released callback, but the callback on the uart receive isn't triggered. When I send stuff from the PC, it does. So it seems that sending stuff via uart3 isn't working. So I guess that must be the wiring.

But I really can't see what I am missing here, the pins are clearly defined in the pinout here: https://os.mbed.com/platforms/ST-Nucleo-F103RB/.

I hope the photo is clear enough, but this is how I connected them.