Gem and Jo Take On Maynooth University

The Irish summer has well and truly started! And despite the fact that the rain has set in again, we are still feeling super summery. This past weekend we had the nicest day out and thankfully the sun played the game and stayed high in the sky all day! It actually got up to about 18 degrees. Shocking stuff.

We are very fortunate here in Ireland to have such gorgeous green places to explore, every town has something whether it's a park or the grounds of an estate that you can freely wander to your hearts content. So that's what we did, we live nearby Maynooth University, which has the prettiest campus in all of the land (we're a little biased though). Not only is the entire campus covered in trees and flowers, but it also has some secret gardens and even an apple orchard! We intended to bring along a little picnic, however after picking up some coffees we got distracted by the sheer beauty of the place and decided to chill on the grass for a couple of hours, it was wonderful!

Brace yourself, there are quite a few pictures....

This is the apple orchard hidden at the back of the university! It's all in bloom at the moment and it is just the prettiest place! 

This is the oldest native tree in Ireland and it's about 700-800 years old! Cool right?

The campus looks just like Hogwarts and we love that! 

Have you been to Maynooth University? Got any suggestions on where to go next?

Until next time,

Gem and Jo's London Tips

If you didn't know from the countless number of instagrams and blog posts about it, we went to London! And boy did we not realise how many rules there are in that city. No. 1 and possibly the most important..don't stand on the left!! 
So to help all the other unwitting tourists like ourselves, we've made a handy-dandy video about our London tips!
So grab a notebook, a cup of tea (2.5 rich tea biscuits) and watch on people....

Do you have any tips for people visiting London? We'd love to know, so chuck em' down in that there comments section!

Until next time,

Gem and Jo Take On London

If you follow our Instagram account (@Gemandjotaketheworld) then it'll be no surprise as to where we've been for the last few days. We went to the wonderfully crazy, busy city of London, in the UK.
We did all the typical touristy things and of course we took lots of pictures, because what kind of tourists would we be if we didn't. If you wanna see us be tourists then just keep on scrolling...

Our first day in London was, of course, spent in the Natural History Museum. Jo got a tad excited about seeing the dinosaurs, as you can tell by the picture up above. The excitement on her face, ah bless! 

Meanwhile Gem was a little excited by the display of rocks that were dotted around the museum. You guys probably know, but Gem graduated with a degree in geography. So this museum was perfect for her nerdy-ness. Look at her standing so proudly next to a stalagmite (the rocks formed inside caves.)

We also went to see the Victoria and Albert Museum which was filled with giant things! That entertained us immensely! 

There's a picture of Jo with a gigantic painting below! It was frigging massive! And that room was filled with giant paintings, it was super impressive! 

Even better was the room filled with giant castings of huge cathedrals and stuff and even a casting of the Statue of David.  We tried to take pictures to convey how absolutely humongous the castings were but it just didn't do them any justice.  If you live near London and haven't been to the V&A you need to go there just for the giant room!  

Here's a picture of Gem that kind of shows the enormity of the giant things that were inside the buildings. This tower thing was so high it made us feel kind of sick just looking to the top of it.

If that wasn't enough for our first day, that evening we took on Piccadilly circus, Soho and four floors of the incredible M&M World. As you might have guessed, we were a bit tired by the end of the day.

The second day of our trip we took a stroll along South Bank just to take in the atmosphere. That is one seriously cool place, all the history that you can take in while walking along one path! And it provides a lovely skyline for a nice instagram post.

Plus we got some beautiful weather for this nice little stroll! It was gorgeous, the perfect day!

We walked all the way from the tube station at Big Ben, which is a lot bigger than we expected, all along South Bank to the Globe Theatre and then over Millennium Bridge (yes we were happy because a Harry Potter scene was filmed there) and then onto St. Paul's Cathedral. Which is also absolutely huge!

We absolutely loved seeing all this history, being touristy is one of our favourite things to do. 

On our last day in the beautiful land of London, we started off by going to see Buckingham Palace. Lets face it, a trip to London wouldn't be complete without it. The place was amazing, and we saw the queen....well we saw a flashy car with police escorts that we have decided was the queen. 

After witnessing royalty, we took a lovely walk in the beautiful weather London is famous for (rain, rain and more rain) down towards Trafalgar Square. We marveled at the famous lions and threw some money into the fountain before having some lunch and heading to the airport. 

It was short but sweet this little trip of ours! Despite how tired we were when we got home, we loved how jam-packed our days were, it really gave off a feeling of excitement and adrenaline! 

We had tons of stories to tell when we got home, from the room of giant things to Gem nearly stepping in a crime scene in one of the tube stations, it certainly wasn't uneventful and we couldn't have asked for more! 

London, we hope to be back soon! 

Have you ever been to London? Let us know in the comments! 

Until next time,

Gem and Jo Take On Travelling

Guess who's going adventuring? 

Well done, you probably guessed right (it wasn't a very tough question, but well done anyway). We are going to London!
We are so super excited, this will be our first overseas trip in ages and we're going to one of the best cities in the world. Who wouldn't be excited?!
To prepare ourselves for this wonderful adventure, we've looked at a couple of trip advisor websites and itinerary builders. Just so we can be super prepared when we get there and know exactly where we want to go.
One site that stood out was Tripomatic, which is an itinerary building website that also has an app, so you can download your plans onto your phone and know where and when everything is while on the go.

When you enter where you're planning your trip, Tripomatic automatically enters a list of places that are ideal for you to visit. So when we entered that we were visiting London, it put in all the great tourist attractions and split everything into different days, it even told us the walking distance between each attraction. How cool is that! It does all the hard work for you, all you have to do is get there and follow the map.

Another thing we've done is make sure to write down in a little notebook, the opening times, prices and closest tube stations to some of the places we want to go. That way if we have no internet access to look at our Tripomatic, we can still tell where we wanted to go and how we can get there. Just a little back up plan, you can never be too careful.

We'll make sure to take lots of pictures to show you guys!

Until next time,

Gem and Jo's One Year Blogiversary

We cannot believe it has been a whole year since we started Gem and Jo Take The World, and it has been an incredible year! We've gone new places, seen new things, tried things we wouldn't have ever tried without blogging and we are so thankful for everyone who has followed us, commented on a video or post, or even just liked a picture of ours on Instagram. Honestly. Thank you.

To celebrate this blogging anniversary, we've put together a list of our most popular posts and videos.

Gem and Jo Take On No.7 Beautifully Matte Foundation:  

We tried this foundation and loved it, so we shared it with you guys and you seemed to love it too! This one is our most popular post yet and we love that you guys love it! 

Gem and Jo's First Glossy Box:

This was one of our favourite posts to write, probably because the pictures came out so pretty for this one. Even though we only ever got this one Glossy Box, we still loved this post and you guys seemed to as well! 

Gem and Jo's On-The-Go Makeup Bags:

We honestly don't know why this is one of our most popular posts, we literally threw it together last minute and chucked it up on the blog so that we didn't leave you guys hanging. And now it's one of our most popular posts. Weird. 

Gem and Jo React To: Game of Thrones, The Red Wedding:

We loved filming this one! And boy was it popular on our youtube! It's our most popular video by a mile! Thank you so much for that, we love knowing people take the time to watch us makes fools of ourselves on the internet! 

Gem and Jo's Primark and ASOS Haul:

We doesn't love a good haul! We really love filming these videos, mainly because we get to talk about new stuff we've gotten and you guys seem to like it too! 

Bonus Round:

Take a look at our very first blog post here.  

Thank you for each and every view, comment, and like you've given us! We love it when we know people enjoy what we do! 

Until next time,

Gem and Jo go to the Dublin Coffee and Tea Festival

Tea Anyone? Coffee? Well we had lots of both this weekend at the Dublin Coffee and Tea Festival in the RDS! Thanks to Jo's family friend Jerry, we got our hands on some complimentary tickets to go to this awesome, super hipster event that was only on for the weekend.
We had a absolute blast, and not just from the amount of coffee and green tea we drank!
We got to sample and taste tons of different brands of tea and coffee from some of the best baristas and coffee companies from not only Ireland but from around the world as well. 
Our favourite was Java Republic, and not because they were serving full sized, free tea! They had an amazing array of flavoured teas, which are all organic and their packaging is all fully biodegradable, even the really cute little silk teabags! We tried a ton of their teas but our favourites were:

Blood Orange Tea. 

You can buy it online Here

Peppermint Tea 

You can buy it online Here

Gunpowder and Mango (Surprisingly doesn't contain gunpowder!)

Buy it online Here

Now the great thing about the Java Republic tea is the teabags are reusable for up to 3 times! But we didn't take their word for it so when we went home we tested it and low and behold, it actually works! Any other teabag would have melted into icky-ness after the second time or so. 

What was really cool was that we also got to chat to Jerry about the coffee and tea industry and how it's growing and improving at a super crazy rate. We learned that coffee is the world's second biggest commodity after oil and that you can now even get a diploma in coffee. We also got to learn a lot about how many different teas and coffees are made and got to see some of the processes used in action. 

The exhibition also had prototypes of the latest coffee making technology including this amazing tap that you can have installed into your kitchen counter-top that makes coffee from a menu on your ipad. Everything is controlled from your ipad from the amount of milk you want right down to how much sugar and water!

We also got to try out a load of different exotic teas and coffees like this green matcha tea. Although this tea may look like gross green liquid, but this stuff is great for you. It is known to increase metabolism, energy and decrease stress. We have heard a lot of great things about matcha tea and we were so excited to try it out and have a taste 

Along with all the amazing teas and coffees on offer, the exhibition also had a chill out zone where you could have a bit of a rest and drink your yummy hot drink and just relax for a moment. 

There was also live music in an outside area where you could just chill and soak up the atmosphere.

After having spent the day immersing ourselves in tea and coffee, we decided to head out to Dun Laoghaire to round off the day. The weather was gorgeous and we went for a bit up a stroll around. We even managed to bump into author Lee Child!!! Don't believe us? Just check out the picture above, he's in it we swear!  

After all that busy excitement we finished off our day with dinner in the Real Gourmet Burger restaurant in Dun Laoghaire where we had some really tasty food. The chips were amazing. if you are in the area definitely check it out. 

We had such a super day out. Thanks so much to Jerry Hughes for giving us the chance to experience the amazingness that was the Dublin coffee and tea festival. We had so much fun. 
As always thanks for reading be sure to let us know what you think in the comments section below, we always love to hear from you. 
Until next time,