Fue is the preterite of ir, and it presents the action as a completed event:
This sounds like a finished action in the story.
Iba is the imperfect, which would usually suggest an ongoing, habitual, or background action:
So fue is used because this is a specific completed trip.
This is a very common learner question.
Here, quería is in the imperfect because it describes a background desire, intention, or state of mind:
The wanting is not presented as a single completed event. It is the reason behind her action.
If you said quiso, it would sound more like she tried to want / she came to want / she decided to want, depending on context, and it is usually less natural here.
A common storytelling pattern in Spanish is:
The accent mark in quería shows where the stress goes:
Without the accent, the pronunciation and spelling rules would point differently. In Spanish, written accents are important because they show the correct stressed syllable and can distinguish forms.
Also, quería is an imperfect form of querer:
Unas is the feminine plural form of the indefinite article. It can mean:
So quería unas sandalias cómodas means she wanted some comfortable sandals or a pair of comfortable sandals.
You could sometimes omit the article in Spanish, but here unas sandalias sounds very natural and idiomatic.
Zapatería is a feminine noun, so it takes la.
Many nouns ending in -ía are feminine:
A zapatería is a shoe shop or shoe store.
The accent mark shows the stress:
It is the feminine plural form of cómodo.
The different forms are:
The written accent stays in all these forms.
This is a classic por vs para question.
Here, para expresses purpose or intended use:
In other words, the sandals are intended to be worn at the party.
Por la fiesta would usually mean something more like:
So para is the correct choice when talking about what something is meant for.
Porque as one word means because and introduces a reason:
Spanish also has similar-looking forms that mean different things:
In this sentence, it is clearly the conjunction because, so it is porque.
In Spanish, adjectives often come after the noun, especially when they are simply describing a quality in a neutral way.
So:
This is the most normal order here.
Sometimes Spanish adjectives can come before the noun, but that often changes the tone or meaning. For ordinary descriptive use, noun + adjective is very common.
Yes. In English, the best translation may vary by region:
For a learner of Spanish from Spain, zapatería is the standard word for a place that sells shoes.
This is an important point because fue can be a form of both ir and ser.
You know which one it is from the context.
Here, fue a la zapatería must be from ir, because:
So in this sentence, fue clearly means went.
Yes, but the meaning changes slightly.
Both are grammatically correct. The original sentence uses la zapatería, which sounds like a particular or contextually identifiable shop.