Fish is a big part of the Christmas menu in Europe, but it's really popular all year long in Portugal.

Portugal eats more fish per capita than even the Japanese do.

Especially cod.

You can eat from the tail to the skin, the cheeks, the tongues, the eyes, everything.

Coming up, we'll hear how codfish is a staple of home cooking in Portugal.

In Italy, the fish markets are crazy right before Christmas.

But if you go there on the 23rd of December, that's really a quintessential experience of the market.

We'll explore the amazing comfort foods of Southern Italy in the hour ahead.

What is very typical of Naples is a salsiceche-friaryelli.

It's sausages with, let's say, broccoli is a very special variety that you can only find around

Monte Vesuvius area.

Plus listeners tell us what it's like to travel for the holidays.

Come along, it's Travel with Rick Steeves.

Do you think there's no place like home for the holidays? We'll explore some options for getting away at Christmas time with our listeners a little later in the hour ahead on today's travel with Rick Steve's.

But if you like the scent of great cooking to fill your house, we'll get you inspired by the

cuisine of Naples and Southern Italy in just a bit.

Let's start with a taste of the almost religious reverence for codfish that you'll find in Portugal.

The Portuguese love fish, especially cod.

Cod has been a staple there since the 1700s, but they don't eat it fresh. It's imported

from the North Atlantic, salted hard as a log and then soaked in water.

I've long wondered how it is that a country that eats more fish per capita than any other

has as its most popular fish, a fish they import from Norway or from Greenland and they never

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