World's Most Beautiful Sunsets

Like trying to retell a dream, recounting a beautiful sunset is a futile enterprise. The colors, the scale, the profundity-the true nature of a sunset is ineffable. What's more, such beauty is ultimately subjective in the first place. While one traveler weeps at the fading orange glow over the Mediterranean, another sits rapt at the smoggy kaleidoscope over a bustling cityscape.

Where, then, does anyone get off trying to name the World's Most Beautiful Sunsets?

Naturally, we turned to the experts: Ten world travelers, artists and adventurers that have not only bid farewell to the sun on every corner of the globe, but have appreciated the metaphorical, spiritual and, yes, visual beauty of nature's original fireworks display. We asked them to describe the most beautiful sunset they've ever seen.

First-what makes a beautiful sunset? For many people, including the Travel Channel's Andrew Zimmern, the beach is usually involved. ''Top sunsets on my list would have to include the beach in Seminyak, Bali, and sitting in sand on the Mahoe Bay on Virgin Gorda in the BVI, sharing the event with my wife and son-and not a person in sight.''

Zimmern has also seen some beautiful sunsets in Africa, Scotland and Canada, but his most memorable sundown occurred in Sicily, Italy. ''We stopped for the night in Noto, in Siracusa, on our way to Marzamemi,'' he says. ''Ten kilometers from the hotel, the entire countryside is dominated by waving fields of wheat [with] ancient palazzo and villas and the ocean ringing the horizon. The view and the sunset were so dramatic we stopped the car and walked to a hilltop to watch it. The setting sun that night cast the most beautiful light I have ever seen in my life. Nothing has ever matched it.''
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