AIUI you need to buy a paper ticket including a London station to use the 241, many people just buy a cheap ticket between 2 inner stations that they don't actually use. Tripadvisor has some guidance on that.
Yes you load travelcards onto Oysters.
But you are around for 3 days then another 5. A weekly travel pass probably won't be good value for you. Buying a 7-day travelcard for the latter 5 days could just about be cheaper, but only if you travel a lot.
If you have a contactless bank card / Apple pay etc. and no overseas transaction fees, you'd get Monday to Sunday capping for the 24th-28th period you are in London, and it will work out the zones automatically too.
Basically if a travelcard would have been cheaper, that's how much you will get charged. If a travelcard would have been more expensive, then you will only pay for the travel you did use.
If you buy the HEx ticket for 20th Oct within the next 6 days, it's only £8.80 each way. That's cheaper than what TfL Rail would cost on Oyster. You'd take bus 332 from Paddington to the hotel, which would be £1.50
The alternative is to take the tube from Heathrow to Kilburn Park, which will involve some awkward interchanges, but only cost £3.10.
If you buy HEx tickets 90 days in advance it's only £5.50. I normally wouldn't recommend it but your hotel is in the right sort of place for it to make sense if you don't mind paying a little more, and it is a lot faster after all
[MENTION=603779]
![/MENTION] Thank you so very much! After several calls to credit card companies the only contactless card I can get is on our Green AMEX which charges FT fees, our Platinum AMEX does not offer the ability (because it is metal?) so I will set stuff up with Google Pay for me and Apple Pay for DH. HEx, for sure. So to recap, to make sure I fully understand, no Travel Pass-buy a cheap ticket, if needed for the 2 for 1 on attractions, contactless (using mobile) on the Tube, HEx tickets are completely separate from TFL and good value for time saved. We will probably take a taxi from train station to hotel.
As you can probably guess we are American and the adage "time is money" is very true, while we don't want to overpay for anything we also know our time has value. Saving time is worth an extra expense, for us. Again, thank you for your help!