There is no free lunch, as anyone who's broken bread with friends just back from a vacation knows. After hours of fake-smiling your way through bad risotto and sagas of lost luggage, you're almost free when — wham! — out come the photos. All 257 of them, each with a story attached. You're lucky to make it home before their next vacation.

So ... can I interest you in a little risotto?

JILL VEJNOSKA /AJC (ENLARGE)

The Capitoline Wolf, featuring Romulus and Remus, presented to Rome, Ga., by order of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1929, is an exact replica of a sculpture on Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy.

Jill Vejnoska/AJC (ENLARGE)

The Tomb of the Known Soldier is the centerpiece of Veterans Plaza in Myrtle Hill Cemetery, but this monument to Women of the Confederacy tells an equally intriguing story. Dedicated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1910, it honors the women of Rome, Ga., who served as nurses to both Union and Confederate soldiers in local hospitals.

JILL VEJNOSKA /AJC (ENLARGE)

If you have any doubt what town you're in, just check for shamrocks painted on Academy Avenue in front of Theatre Dublin.

FAUXROPE BY THE NUMBERS Trips taken: 4 (Rome, Vienna, Dublin, Oxford) Miles traveled: 923 Gas purchased: $145 (approximate) Cemeteries visited: 5* (* Does not include time spent in the presence of Uncle Tobe, one-time resident-turned-ghost of Orna Villa, a private home in Oxford.) Separate servings of homemade ice cream consumed: 4, counting an Italian ice in Rome. Number of Nobel Peace Prize winners nearly encountered: 1 On a side trip from Vienna to Plains, I stopped at the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site's Visitor Center Museum in Plains High School. The former president had been there just the day before, a guard said. As a consolation prize, I had homemade peanut ice cream in a local restaurant. Georgia travel stories Town is artisan-friendly  Five romantic spots for the newly wed  Art, music and scenery  Your pick: Pottery, berries  Charleston graciously gives Savannah 'Most Mannerly' title  Photos: Travel / Southeast Galleries Latest deals! Back to: Travel | Southeast destinations Travel Guide Powered by

When I decided to spend this summer in a place I've come to call Fauxrope — "European" hot spots right here in Georgia — my expectations were modest: Save money by going to our Rome and Vienna instead of theirs. See Georgia through newly appreciative eyes. Cleverly ensure I'd be elsewhere when my editors needed somebody at an important sewer hearing.

Alas, the Fauxropean Grand Tour has come to an end, but not before wildly exceeding all my expectations. This summer has disclosed Georgia wonders I'd never known (Martin Luther King Jr. made his first big speech at age 15 in Dublin, Ga.) and quirks too good to be missed (there's a lawyer named Tony Blair in merry olde Oxford, Ga.).

And in an equally surprising — and gratifying — twist, people actually wanted to see my vacation "slides." As the tour stops multiplied, so did e-mails from readers following along: "Without cheating and looking at a map, I tried this morning to think of other Georgia cities that might get a visit," went one fairly typical missive.

I'd say it was all because of my epic storytelling (but I'm far too modest). You're only as good as your material, and here all credit goes to the large, lovable, occasionally loopy state of Georgia itself, which turns out to be a pretty swell place to visit — especially if you already live here.

The Road to Damascus ... Not!

Don't sell Fauxrope short. In the Peach State, it's so extensive, I had no time at all to hit Amsterdam, Bremen, Berlin, Bristol, Denmark, Sparta and — for all you fans of imaginary foreign places — Eldorado, Ga.

Or, for that matter, Georgia's "Middle East," which stretches across the state's south from Damascus near the Alabama border, through Cairo to Jerusalem in the east.

Heck, we've had so many of these towns over the years, we've occasionally had to kill a few off. Such as Egypt, which Susan Exley of the Historic Effingham Society described as being a "dead town" now.

Too bad, because at one point the timber boomtown, fortuitously located along the railroad between Atlanta and Savannah, had an Egypt Pyramid School and a Pyramid Plantation. The circa-1870 town — supposedly named for all its fine dark, corn-producing soil — tended to catch fire periodically (you try regularly mixing timber with sparks from passing trains) and gradually ceased to exist beyond the few houses and old buildings there now.

Even more tragic, once-thriving Budapest essentially ended up being crushed like a grape under a winemaker's foot.

In the late 1890s, a developer invited hundreds of Hungarian immigrants experienced in winemaking to relocate to Haralson County from Pennsylvania mine country. The vineyards and town flourished until the Georgia Prohibition Act of 1907 forced most Budapest-ians to move on again. According to reader Andrea Lauer Rice, there's a historic marker at the junction of Budapest Spur and Hwy 78. I plan on going there and raising a glass of merlot soon.

Faux-merica the Beautiful

Dear Sudie Teszler: Thanks for your e-mail. It was delightful to read, "My mom and I are planning a trip to the 'real' Europe this summer, but have now decided next year we are staying in Georgia to do the Grand Tour."

A little advice: Better set aside at least the next two summers for traveling the world in Georgia. The international part can be confusing enough: Vienna's up the road from Queensland (as in Australia), Oxford's within spitting distance of Bethlehem, and so on. Indeed, it sometimes seems like the entire state must have been named by one guy who went around randomly opening an atlas and pointing. (Maybe he'd had one too many in Budapest.)

Even after you polish off Fauxrope, there's still the United States of Georgia to contend with. It goes from Albany to West Point, with the likes of Cleveland, Dakota, Hoboken and Twin City (just the one, apparently) in between. Even Fargo, North Dakota — where the average high in August is 59 degrees — has a doppelgänger down in Clinch County on the edge of the, uh, balmy Okefenokee Swamp.

What's that all about? I'll find out next summer or be eaten by a swamp gator trying. If I survive, I just might look for the heart of Dixie, too. Shouldn't be hard. Dixie's a town of 1,600 people located in Brooks County, not too far from — only in Faux-merica, folks — Boston.

Erin go bratwurst

Driving the highways and more remote byways of Fauxrope gives a person time to think: Who tagged that tree with a big "John 3:16" well off the side of I-75 outside Jackson? Why, sigh, is "The John Tesh Radio Show" on all the time, on every station south of Macon? What kind of idiot goes all the way to Vienna on a day that everyone else knows the fantabulous Mennonite bakery in nearby Montezuma is closed?

Then, when you get back, you don't have enough time or brain cells left to share all the good stuff. So here are a few more summer vacation "souvenirs":

• Not quite Pamper-ed: Two important things I forgot to mention about the Capitoline Wolf statue in front of Rome, Ga.'s historic City Hall (Mussolini sent it as a gift in 1929; the naked twin figures of Romulus and Remus were sometimes diapered on important public occasions): One of the twins (Romans were never sure which one) was kidnapped in 1933 and ultimately had to be replaced. And when Italy declared war on the Allies during World War II, the statue had to be hidden, because, well, various patriotic Americans threatened to blow it up.

• Scarlett O'Hara need not apply: Being a Damn Yankee, I have no roots here. Throw in the fact that I'm a weird Czech-Irish blend, and going to Dublin, Ga., was the closest I could come. Or so it seemed, until I heard from five other Czech-Irish Georgians! Can an extremely elite social club be far behind?

• Mea culpa, y'all: Readers were quick to point out when my grasp of history or grammar temporarily went on vacation as well.

Two people thought I should have noted that Ellen Axon Wilson, who died during husband Woodrow's first term in the White House, is buried in Rome's Myrtle Hill Cemetery. One person questioned my definition of "Lingua Franca" when writing about Vienna, and another was astounded that I hadn't mentioned that James Bond creator Ian Fleming had once taught at Oxford College in Newton County.

All legitimate points — except for the Bond fan, who, upon further review, decided an old girlfriend had given him bad information. "She was cute so I believed everything she said," he wrote in a graciously witty follow-up e-mail.

• I went to Fauxrope and all I got was this ... taquito: Even veteran travelers sometimes get the blues. My one near-Ugly American moment came at a sprawling gas-convenience store outside of Rome in June. The sign said $3.85 a gallon, so I zoomed in and paid cash upfront. But by the time I'd walked back to the pump, it had risen to $3.91.

I pumped under protest, then trudged back inside to collect my (meager) change. And to buy a hot taquito, the mere smell of which boosted my spirits immeasurably. I caught the manager's eye and — ignoring his wary look — cheerfully called out, "There's nothing a taquito can't make better." He paused only long enough to smirk: "I just raised the price on those, too, ha!"

There really is no free lunch.