The small bays that the city limits touch are pretty far inland. I think anyone looking at a map of the area would point to Galveston, not Houston, as the local "coastal city," even though it's nowhere as large. Part of Houston's success is due to its protected location, slightly inland from the coast.
Houston does not touch the Gulf of Mexico. I does touch Trinity Bay which is not really part of the Gulf of Mexico. I don't really agree that Houston is a coastal city.
As a Houstonian I absolutely would say that Houston is on the Gulf Coast. There is a portion of the city that is literally called the “Port of Houston”, and even if it doesn’t directly touch the ocean, the entire economy and climate is influenced by the Gulf.
I was shocked to see Istanbul considered to be on the Balkan peninsula. Most maps I have seen show the Balkan peninsula or Balkan region ending at the Bulgaria/Turkey border, although some do show it going all the way to the Bosphorus Strait.
Pretty easy except never heard of Melanesia before, and perhaps erroneously I don't think of New Zealand as part of Polynesia so I missed that one, too. Counting Istanbul as in the Balkans is extremely odd and I would have probably missed that one, as well, except the caveats kind of gave it away. I'm sure most people are thinking Athens.
I think the New Zealaand/Polynesia relation is bit ambiguous. I think sometimes New Zealand is not considered a geographic part of Polynesia, but ethnically, culturally and linguistically, the Maoris are definitely a Polynesian nation.
I can imagine that for non-US citizens it could mean the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean, so the area around Kamchatka, Japan and maybe Korean Peninsula. Although, as a proud Pole, I knew what the author meant ;)
No it's not, it's on the western side of the Pacific so it's the Pacific North West. You may be confused by the fact that the longitude numbers for it are numbers 'east of Greenwich', but it is definitely the Western side. East and West don't swap sides just because you're on the opposite side of the globe from the Greenwich meridian.
People ignorant of the local geography might also mistake New South Wales for a region in the south of Wales, or the Horn of Africa to be the entire western part of the continent, jutting hornlike from the rest. Nonetheless, these regions, like "Pacific Northwest", have specific meanings.
Just because you didn't know something and it's in the US doesn't mean it's an invalid clue.
Just because you didn't know something and it's in the US doesn't mean it's an invalid clue.