BOE 14 days in 3 weeks!! Question on Beaune and Non-Smoking Rooms?!

Can't answer your question about free time in Beaune, as I have not done the RS BOE tour, but I can definitely tell you the rooms will be non-smoking. All RS tours are non smoking and I have never been in a room on a RS tour that had been a smoking room.

Have you seen the Tours FAQ? Here it is; click on Hotel And Rooming Policies to see what they have to say about smoking: http://www.ricksteves.com/travel-help/tours-faq. The rest of that page has lots of other useful information, too.

I stayed in Beaune on the 21 day BOE. As a group we did a wine tasting and tour at this winery. http://www.bouchard-aine.fr/en/our-house.r-1/ I am not particularly in to wine, but enjoyed this as each room was focused on the 5 senses and how they relate to the taste of wine. Your guide may have recommendations as well or may be able to organize something if several want to go altho it looks like you do a tasting on the way to Beaune.

I am usually able to detect the smell of smoke in a hotel room and in the tours I have been on have never noticed a smoky smell. If you do get a room that smells smoky, I would talk with the guide right away.

Thanks everyone. I had not seen that FAQ post...thanks for sharing. I just researched every hotel we will be staying at, and all are smoke free except two which offer both smoking and non-smoking rooms. I just spoke to a helpful RS agent who kindly put a note into my account for the guide to ensure we get non-smoking rooms at those two.