u/nithinrdy

Hi, I'll be in London from the 13th - 19th of October, mainly for a thing in Poole on the 16th. I'll be traveling solo and was hoping to get some insight on the following:

• I'll be landing at ~2PM and am planning to take the SL7 bus from Heathrow to my stay in Sutton. The TfL app tells me its a straight shot with no changes (I'm not worried about travel time). Is this a sound plan or should I stick to an uber?
  • I'm worried whether I'll have enough space for luggage without getting in people's way (1 larger-than-cabin-sized trolley bag and 1 small backpack, which is reasonable I think but not sure).
• I'm planning to travel to Poole (luggage remains in Sutton) sometime around noon on the 16th via national-rail. I'll check into my one-night stay there (20-min walk from station), before heading for the event in the evening (10-min walk from station). I'll head back to Sutton on the 17th (national-rail again). Anything I'm missing in this plan? Any tips for out-of-London travel that I should keep in mind?
• Where can I get my hands on an Oyster card the earliest after landing? I have contactless cards but don't want to whip them out all the time (and would also like the oyster card as a souvenir). I've read the megathread but the article there says that I can't purchase a visitor's oyster card after I've arrived in London, and the website selling that visitor's card says its currently unavailable.
  • Surely there must be some way to get an oyster card (visitor variant looks cool, but otherwise works too)?

Unrelated but during the rest of the trip I'm hoping to visit the following and would like opinions as to whether I'm missing any obvious holes (stuff that's closed this time of year, any tips, etc.):

• the Big Ben, walk around the Parliament Square/Buckingham Palace areas, the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square/Covent Garden,
• the Natural History Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Kensington Gardens,
• the British Museum, the National Gallery and (possibly) the Tower of London,

I'm thinking of covering one bullet point per day (14th, 15th, 18th, not necessarily in order), starting and ending each day at my stay in Sutton.

I'm super flexible with these items because I'm mainly there for the event in Poole and I don't mind missing out on some of these other things due to time constraints or whatever.

Thanks a lot for reading all of that!