Hello! We are taking a 10 day trip in June - flying into Zurich and out of Milan. Our only "must have" are two days at Lake Como somewhere in the middle (visiting family). We'd welcome recommendations on where we should focus our time in Switzerland and Italy. Favorite cities/places to stay; favorite methods of transportation; anything to avoid. All recommendations welcome!

Without knowing any of your preferences, I'd say in that part of Italy, Vicenza is a nice town to visit, and you might look into visiting/staying at a winery in the Veneto region.

Trains will get you from Milan to many cities and towns in the region, but you'll need a vehicle to do the wineries in the Veneto.

There's some debate about the value of doing Milan for a few days. I happen to like it and think it's worth your time.

Thank you! We love to be outdoors and explore new cities on foot. Certainly a winery or two never hurts

May be you will have a look at
http://www.myswitzerland.com/en/home.html
http://www.swisstravelsystem.ch/en/
http://fahrplan.sbb.ch/bin/query.exe/en
http://www.italia.it/en/home.html

Well I would suggest you start by doing some research of your own on the areas of Switzerland and Italy between Zurich and Milan. Otherwise, you are kinda asking people to write what any guidebook will already have in it.

With only 10 days (does that also include your arrival and departure days?) and already planning a few days for Lake Como, you do not have much time to play with at all.

To me, that means you should really just concentrate on 1 other place to add to Zurich, Lake Como and Milan, if even that. If you plan to spend a full day in Zurich, day 2, if day 1 is your arrival day and the same in Milan if day 10 day is your departure day, you're down to 6 days left to work with minus your time on Lake Como.

You need to actually work out how your day would work out, like this for example:

Day 1 arrival Zurich
Day 2 in Zurich
Day 3 to XXX
Day 4 in XXX
Day 5 to Lake Como
Day 6 in Como
Day 7 in Como
Day 8 to Milan
Day 9 in Milan
Day 10 depart Milan

People tend to not count time lost to travel and often count travel days is if they were a day spent in a place. They aren't. Even though the actual travel time between places may only be a few hours, you still lose at least half a day making each move. Often, you lose the whole day other than perhaps the evening in reality.

Personally, I prefer to never go anywhere that I don't think I would want to spend at least 3 full days in. Losing a day to travel, just to spend 1 day in a place makes no sense to me at all. That's a 50% waste of time to me. I prefer not to move any more than an average of every 4 days minimum.