Comprising a city within a city made of housing complexes and self-built neighborhoods, the Maré favela complex in Rio’s North Zone packs 130,000-plus residents into the area between the Avenida Brasil highway and Guanabara Bay, just south of Rio’s International Airport.

If there is a word to describe the Laranjeiras (“Orange Trees”) neighborhood, it is “pleasant.” Agradável. Agreeable. As you walk up its main drag, Laranjeiras Street, you pass by the creamy yellow and white façade of the elegant 19th-century National Institute for the Education of the Deaf on your right. Soon, on your left, you could come across the youth orchestra Camerata Laranjeiras playing free concerts at the General Glicério fair. It’s measurably Rio’s most progressive neighborhood – in the 2012 mayoral election, it was the neighborhood that most favored human rights activists and opposition candidate Marcelo Freixo (48 percent of the neighborhood voted for him in the election against Mayor Eduardo Paes, whereas the city as a whole voted only 28 percent for Freixo). Follow the rising street to its top and you’ll find yourself at the tourist train, ready to go visit the Christ statue.

Cariocas are doubly lucky. They live in a city bursting with natural beauty even in its concrete corners, where wide red and waxy abricó-de-macaco flowers grow in crowded plazas and you’re liable to have an overly ripe and spikey jacá fruit fall on your head as you rush to an appointment. For many, Rio is vacation, beaches, forests and samba clubs – enough to satisfy the craving for a life more exotic.

For a country of Brazil’s size (pop. 190 million), the number of foreigners in the country is pretty miniscule. Less than 1 percent of the country’s residents are foreign-born; the top countries of origin for those foreigners are the U.S., Japan and Paraguay. (By comparison, about 13 percent of the U.S. population of 319 million is foreign-born.)

The Praça da Bandeira, an area of Rio that until recent years was mostly known for prostitution and cheap inner-city housing, is rapidly changing. Lying in the shadow of the massive Maracanã Stadium – built for the 1950 World Cup and the planned location of the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics – it is alive with new construction and pedestrian traffic, which are changing the tired face of this historical but underappreciated neighborhood. And sitting snugly in the midst of this new buzz is Aconchego Carioca, a restaurant and bar with one of the best beer menus in Rio.

Chat up the older residents of a Rio favela and you’re likely to start hearing romantic stories about Brazil’s northeast: those colorful cajú and mangaba fruit trees, the clear turquoise ocean, the folksy and upbeat forró music, chewy tapioca sandwiches and cakes. Brazilians call that saudades – a longing for something lost, which may or may not exist in the form one dreamily remembers it. These are the pleasant memories many northeastern immigrants hold amidst the urban hustle of crowded Rio de Janeiro, where a working-class Brazilian knows the beach exists but easily lives a hot two-hour bus ride away from it.

Ilha do Governador (“Governor's Island”), the biggest island in Guanabara Bay, was a popular weekend destination for many Rio inhabitants decades ago. In the 1980s, with the construction of the Rio International Airport on the island, the introduction of oil industry-related activities in the surrounding area and the beginning of a sad cycle of pollution and overpopulation, the place lost a good part of its grace and charm – but not all of it.

From 6 a.m., Tuesdays through Sundays, over 500 customers – from housewives to Michelin-starred restaurateurs – stream into a two-story, tile-front fish market in working-class Ponta d’Areia, a neighborhood in Niteroi, across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro. Since 2 a.m., stall owners have been out greeting fishing boats at docks across the city, where captains return from four- to 10-day trips along Brazil’s southeast coast, up to the Lake Region (Região dos Lagos, which includes the cities of Maricá, Saquarema and Cabo Frio, still in Rio de Janeiro state) and south to the state coastlines of São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina.

Between the modernist Burle Marx promenade lining the Copacabana beach and the Brazilian penchant for striving to be the country of the future, it’s easy to forget that Rio is rich with history. The centuries have seen the waxing and waning of an empire.

Editor's Note: This spot is sadly no longer open. Once upon a time, there was a fishmonger. Every morning, he would wake up very early and go to the fish market, buy lots of fish and sell it at his stand in the open-air market near his home.

It is one of the most uttered phrases by gringos here: “Rio is a paradise, but I really miss ______ food.” That blank may be filled by “Korean,” “Ethiopian” or “real Mexican.” Very often, the object of the foreigner’s wander-gastro-lust is Indian.

Editor's Note: Sadly, this spot is now closed. The coolest, most beautiful young cariocas spend their nights at Hipódromo – as well as its equally famous neighbor, Braseiro da Gávea – drinking, eating and flirting. But there’s much more to Hipódromo than meets the eye; the food is excellent, the service outstanding. In fact, the bar’s biggest draw may well be Antônio Lacerda, the most famous bar waiter in town.

It’s hard to find a “backstreet” in Ipanema, Rio’s pricey, posh epicenter of tourism, where real estate is prime and snack bars charge twice the price of grubbier places elsewhere. But leave it to three Frenchmen to open a wine bar that sincerely strives to be – and succeeds in being – a Brazilian boteco in the city’s most iconic beachside neighborhood. The bubbly trio Vava, Laulau and Gerard saw in an old construction supply store near the Ipanema metro stop an opportunity to create an upscale bar with the charm (and, believe it or not, the prices) of a Rio neighborhood eatery.

For Carnival in Rio, new blocos, or free street parties, are born every year when creative friends put their heads together to dream up a theme and a combination of musicians that will tempt partygoers for a magical few hours. New blocos publicize and build momentum via open “rehearsals” in the weeks leading up to Carnival that are parties in and of themselves. If these rehearsals bombar (explode with excellence), word spreads fast, and the bloco comes roaring to life during Carnival and for years to come.

Until a few years ago, breakfast eateries were not very common in Rio. Cariocas would have breakfast at home or at a bakery, while tourists had to make do with the always-boring "Continental breakfast" offered at hotels. But thankfully, everything has changed.