Our first night in town, we discovered that even when we weren’t shopping, Rio’s style was downright inspirational. It also helped to have professional guide Giônia Belmonte giving us the lowdown of where the beautiful people shopped, sunned, dined, drank, and worked out. After dinner at the stylishly healthy Ipanema location of Gula Gula (affordably chic right down to mix-and-match main courses and sides, and oh, that fresh-squeezed Raspberry-Orange juice!), with Giônia spending a lot of her mealtime recommending other restaurants and drawing maps of Leblon’s prime shopping in our notebooks, we set out to the Salgueiro Samba School rehearsal to watch the community prepare for their turn at the upcoming Carnival. Even in the heart of a favela, the style and spirit was infectious and one could not help but be awed by the massive, very alive all-ages crowd.