Daughter surprises mom at the airport with trip to Copenhagen, Paris
Betsy Shortsleeve thought the pair were going to Washington, D.C.
What mother daughter duo wouldn't want to whisk off to Europe for an impromptu girls trip?
For Kat and Betsy Shortsleeve, that daydream became a reality when Kat Shortsleeve found out her mom had already taken time off work for a trip that fell through. With just two weeks' notice, she arranged the surprise of a lifetime.
"I just jumped on the moment, and I told her that I had a work conference for my travel company in D.C.," the 27-year-old Boston-based travel entrepreneur told "Good Morning America" of how she hatched the idea, setting plans in motion and selecting a fake destination where they'd be headed and had been together many times in the past.
Little did her mom know, until they arrived at Boston Logan International Airport together, that instead, they'd be taking a longer flight and would need some important items, like passports.
"We'd talk about how cool it would be to just show up at the airport and not realize that you're going somewhere really far away and have someone surprise you that way," Kat Shortsleeve said. "But it was so difficult to keep the surprise... the day of the trip, I was sick to my stomach when I woke up -- I was so nervous."
"I didn't ask her anything. She had the tickets on her phone. I had my driver's license, we were good to go," Betsy Shortsleeve recalled, adding that because her daughter travels often, she had full faith in her directions and planning. "We get in line and the TSA lady says to me, 'I need your passport' ... Kathryn sort of snickered a little bit and gave me the passport. So I gave it to the lady and then I was looking at her still very confused ... I didn't know that she was recording the whole debacle."
"In the lounge, [Kat] said, 'I want to I want to [record] your reaction when I tell you where we're going,'" Betsy Shortsleeve recalled of the big reveal.
The story behind the woman who surprised her mom at the airport with a trip to Europe
Kat Shortsleeve later uploaded a video of the reveal to her TikTok account, where it has since gone viral with 1.8 million views and counting.
"We're going to two countries. We're going first to Copenhagen, and then we're going to Paris," Kat Shortsleeve says in the video, as her mom sits with her hands held to her cheeks in complete disbelief.
"No we're not," Betsy Shortsleeve replies, before her daughter hands her an international plug adapter and the two embrace in a hug.
Kat Shortsleeve told "GMA" she chose those two cities because her mom had "wanted to go to Copenhagen for a while."
"She has Danish roots and it wasn't really on the radar," she said.
Plus, she said, the two had traveled to Paris together before and "had a really lovely time when we went in the past... so I thought I would do something that she does know, that she really enjoys, and then add on something that she'd really liked to do, but just hasn't come up in the plans to actually go and make it happen."
"I was beyond shocked -- oh my goodness," Betsy Shortsleeve said of the surprise. "To spend time with my daughter in those countries and just, together, we capture each other for the time, that's just so special."
The pair said they enjoyed "lots of Danish pastries, did lots of shopping" and "some biking tours" in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, as well as wellness activities like the "spa, sauna and steam room... read our books and had lots of cappuccinos. It was really, really nice."
"I think there are a lot of places we really want to go, a lot of experiences we want to have, and I think if we don't jump on the moment when you have it in front of you that it passes you by," Kat Shortsleeve added.
Betsy Shortsleeve hailed the experience as "a trip of a lifetime," adding, "To spend time together that is just memorable, it means so, so much."
"My heart just explodes... We had so much special time together. Nothing like two girls on a trip," she added with a huge smile.
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