Obama Picking Up His Nobel Prize

The president will spend 26 hours in Oslo meeting the royal family, accepting the Nobel at an afternoon ceremony and attending an award banquet that evening.

At the ceremony, Obama will accept a $1.4 million prize check, a gold medal and a diploma.

He also will speak at the ceremony, which will be streamed live on CNN.com starting at 7 a.m. ET. He will touch on the war in Afghanistan, for which he last week announced a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops, said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Obama's day will begin with a trip to the Nobel Institute, where he will meet for the first time the five-member panel that unanimously picked him for the prize, said Mette Owre of the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama will then meet with Norway's King Harald V and Queen Sonja before heading to the award ceremony.

“Then he goes to the hotel where he is staying. He will have some downtime. He is governing America at the time,” Owre said.

In the evening, the president will be the guest of honor at a banquet where the king and queen and the Norwegian prime minister will be among 250 attendees, Owre said. [via]