mod_rewrite and getting url variables

I used mod_rewrite to change http://www.mysite.com/page/1 to http://www.mysite.com/page.php?id=1 to enable a search friendly url. Everything works fine, except that when I try to get the URL variable ($id) by using $_GET, it doesn't return anything. With http://www.mysite.com/page.php?id=1 it gets $id just fine. I thought the mod_rewrite would keep the url variables??? If not, I know the alternative would be to get the whole url as a string and change it to an array by using the "/" as the delimiter and obtain $id from that. But I'd rather go that way if there's no other alternative. The .htaccess file has the following commands: RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^page/([0-9]+)/?$ page.php?id=$1 [L] Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.