Wouldn’t it be lovely if we all got the opportunity to pack up and vacation in Florida with our best friends on spring break? If we got to take an Instagram boomerang of the ocean tide rolling over our toes with a fruity beverage in our hands? Unfortunately, this isn’t a reality for everyone. For some, this sort of trip may not be in the budget, but that doesn’t mean that a fun spring break is unattainable.

I am most certainly one of those struggling college students who did not take a wild trip this spring break. Instead, my boyfriend and I decided to have a little weekend getaway together to make the most of our time off. Destination: Cincinnati, Ohio. Much more ~budget friendly~ and still overall an awesome mini-vacation.

From our small hometown, the drive to Cincinnati was only estimated to take two hours. But, if you are like me, you accidentally tell your man to get on the wrong interstate and add an extra 30 minutes to your trip. It’s fine. I’m fine. Clearly, I just wanted to make the car ride last a little bit longer.

Upon arriving to the “Queen City” (I didn’t even know that was Cincinnati’s nickname??), we headed right across the river to the Newport Aquarium. As one can imagine, the aquarium was loaded with people of all ages eager to spend their Saturday afternoon checking out the new octopus exhibit. So, my boyfriend and I passed time by walking to different shops and sipping on coffee at Starbucks until it was our ticket time for the Aquarium. Peep the city view from Starbucks...

Checking in to our hotel that evening, we were sweetly surprised to discover that the “Queen Standard” room we booked at the Hilton Cincinnati had accidentally not been cleaned, so we were upgraded to one of the corner-room suites. Safe to say that we got a lot more bang for our buck after booking what was the best deal on Priceline.com.

That night we went out to dinner and explored what the city had to offer. Between servers and Uber drivers, we had the opportunity to talk to all different kinds of Cincy locals and were given recommendations on places we needed to check out. One of these included the restaurant we went to the next day for brunch called A Taste of Belgium. The recommendation did not disappoint.

Overall, the trip was significantly cheaper than any week in Florida would have been. The city still gave us that “big city vibe” without being too chaotic and left us feeling like we got to have ourselves an enjoyable vacation. I would definitely recommend this trip or some variation of it to anyone looking for an entertaining idea for this spring break or vacations in the future.