In the past 20 years, I’ve stayed at dozens of different hotels all over Stockholm. So it is without any hesitation whatsoever that I can say Södermalm is easily my favorite island to be based on when visiting the capital.

This past visit, I stayed within meters of Maria Magdalena Church captured above. The photograph was taken just a few days ago, on my merry way to enjoy a beer or two with Annika – a dear old friend and, in our youth, a former bartender colleague from Hotel Riksgränsen in Swedish Lapland.

There’s something about Södermalm that always enchants me. One moment I’m weaving past vintage shops and falafel joints on Götgatan, the next I’m up on the cliffs of Mariaberget, watching Riddarfjärden and the old rooftops of Gamla Stan. A view that never gets old. Södermalm has this gift for stitching the ordinary and the quietly spectacular together.

By the time I reached the bar, my shoulders had already dropped a few centimeters. That’s what Söder does to me. It doesn’t try too hard. It doesn’t shout. It just offers a good walk, a good view, multiple places where a good meal can be enjoyed – and the faint but persistent feeling that, if you weren’t already living somewhere else, you could live there quite happily.