Red busses hop on hop off

Minus lugging the bags, I have employed that strategy in a few cities - not Stockholm. I don't think HOHO's are all that bad. They're not the best way to get around and they're not the best tour guides, but you can sit down and get an overview of the tourist attractions that can be incorporated into a loop driven by a large bus.

I hope you are staying someplace that will stow your bags until you can check in. That would make things better IMHO.

on our first day when we'll be lugging our bags and likely jetlagged.

Hi there -
Is there are reason you'll be lugging your bags around on your first day? If you've booked a hotel, most will store your bags for you if you're too early for check-in. I don't think most hoho buses are really set up for accommodating luggage, and you're not going to want to do any hopping on and off if that means leaving it unattended.

The problem with these sorts of buses is that they're not all equal: they can be very good in one city and very bad in another (Rome is one of the latter). Common complaints on the bad ones are long waits, buses too full to pick up passengers, broken or sub-standard audio equipment and dirty vehicles/grimy windows. Reviews of Stockholm's Red Buses are not very good at all, and Stromma City Sightseeing buses look to be just as bad, if not worse.

If it's a rainy or otherwise weather-inclement first day or there's no place to sit on open top, you'd end up stuck inside the bus: not great for jet-lag. I guess you could just wait and see what you feel like doing when you get there? Otherwise, I'd dump the bags and just take a walk in the fresh air. :O)

I'm staying in an Airbnb and I can't check in until 4 p.m., but my flight arrives at noon. And the Airbnb is very far from the city center.

We're traveling very light but it would still be nice not to have the bags. I wonder if a Downtown hotel would let us pay to store them even if we're not staying there.

If you are going to just stay on the bus and not hop on and off, why not take your baggage on the bus? It will probably be close to 2:00 pm by then if you arrive at noon, so you will only have a couple of hours, or less,to kill. As you say the AirBnB is way out of town., and it will take time to get there.

Why don't you simply check your luggage for a few hours at the lockers at the Stockholm central train station? It's fairly close to where you can catch a HOHO bus. We did that after checking out of our hotel the last morning in town, for about 3 hours of final HOHO riding before leaving. The lockers cost a reasonable amount, didn't require any local currency (we used our CCs for literally everything in Scandinavia), and came equipped with a friendly, English speaking attendant who explained how to use it. We found the Stockholm HOHO bus and boats to be reasonable and useful. We don't count on getting everything we need for city orientation from HOHOs. That's what guidebooks and audio tours are for IMO.

I just returned from a 10 day trip to Copenhagen and Stockholm and had the Stockholm pass while there. An irritating thing about the HOHO busses in Stockholm is that there are two competing lines and they both have virtually identical red busses. Only one of them (the ones with a green dot as opposed to a red dot) can be used with the Stockholm pass. I can't tell you how many times the bus drivers had to tell people that they didn't take the pass. Unless your Airbnb is on the bus line, which it sounds like it isn't, then the bus won't help you get there though it is a good way to get an overview of the city. Write your Airbnb host and ask if it is possible to drop your luggage off early. If they don't have guests on the day before you arrive, it may be possible. We had the opposite problem that our flight wasn't until 5:30 but had to be out of the Airbnb by 11 am, but we contacted the host and ended up keeping the luggage there until 2 pm. Our Airbnb was in Gamla Stan, which was fantastic!