The Essinge islands sit midstream in Mälaren, between the city and the western suburbs, with the country's busiest motorway flying straight over the top. Lilla Essingen and Stora Essingen are small, residential, and quietly worth a walk: pale 1940s funkis (functionalist) housing, shore paths all the way round, and that motorway roar overhead that makes the quiet feel earned. Three and a half kilometres, mostly along the water.
Bus 1 lands you at Essingetorget on Lilla Essingen — grocer, bakery, the ordinary square of an island that keeps to itself. Walk the funkis blocks first, then drop to the shore path: boatyards, jetties, a working waterfront rather than a tidy one.
The strange beat is under the Essingeleden viaduct, where the whole nation's traffic thunders overhead while you stand on a silent jetty. Then cross to Stora Essingen, where the shore opens out into wooden jetties and swimming spots — the islanders' summer evenings.
End at Cyrillus Johansson's 1959 brick church, then the bus 1 back from the square.
