Using CSS in CodeIgniter MVC

[eluser]Rey Philip Regis[/eluser]
Hi guys,

I need your help, in my view "view_products.php" I need to attach an external css file "default.css"

Before that here's my directory structure:
code_igniter
index.php
license.txt
.htaccess
system
appplication
fonts
...
.... and so on

so what I did is:
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'code_igniter/system/css/default.css'; ?>" />

also I put an .htaccess file like:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule !\.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css)$ index.php

and I saved that in the code_igniter directory {look at my directory structure above}
then when I execute http://localhost/code_igniter/index.php
the css didn't work. Any advice on how to correct it, so the css file will render its style to my view.

Good day.

Philip