The August issue of Travel + Leisure magazine ranked Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee as one of the top luxury resort hotels in North America. This five-star hideaway took the top spot for its excellent service, high-quality restaurants and excellent facilities.

It also ranked highly on a global rating, coming in at No. 24 out of the magazine's Top 100 Hotels. It received a score of 94.4 out of 100 on the North American rankings, placing it ahead of runners up like Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City, Utah. Blackberry Farms is owned and run by the CEO of Ruby Tuesday restaurants group Sandy Beall and his family. The 62 room property was first opened in 1976 and has earned many other awards over its long history. However, the ranking from Travel + Leisure is its highest overall ranking to date.

A luxury hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka is being built by Shangri La Asia. The company recently pushed out the completion date on the project to the end of 2014 due to its complex design. The hotel complex will feature deluxe apartments along with 500 hotel rooms and high-end retail shops as well. A second development in Sri Lanka is also planned by Shangri La, in the southern coastal city of Hambantota.

That 300 room resort will actually open ahead of the Colombo hotel in 2013. Taken together, both projects represent a total investment by Shangri La of $500 million. The ground has not yet been broken on the Colombo development, as designers spend the next two to three months ironing out some complex structural details. Work on the Hambantota project should begin next month.

A luxurious hotel suite at the Gresham in Dublin, Ireland is named after Elizabeth Taylor, in honor of her two visits there with Richard Burton. The Gresham is a landmark Dublin hotel on O'Connell Street, and it was home to the couple for 10 weeks in 1965 during the filming of 'The Spy Who Came in From the Cold'.

Taylor and Burton took over a whole floor of the hotel along with their entourage of children, a nurse, a maid, and a monkey. Liz had adopted a Bush Baby, which is a small African primate, as a pet and decided to take it with her to Dublin. However, the Bush Baby did not take kindly to its luxurious imprisonment in the suite and decided to do some redecorating. It knocked over vases and lights, and ripped the curtains before retreating to the bathroom to hang out on one of the water pipes.